The Dangers of Political Performance

The new statesman . Why are you here ? Let me put it very simply, Vince. I'm taller than you . I'm better looking than you. I think I think I'm stronger than you . And I'm here to ch allenge you to a match in WrestleMania. What ? Oh, I get it. It's the battle of a billionaire. That's right. This is Donald Trump in 20 07 at the height of his reality TV fame, challenging WWE co-founder Vince McMahon to a fight. He's speaking the theatrical language of professional wrestling, but if you listen back now, it doesn't sound all that different from the way he speaks today as President of the United States. This is where the story gets interesting, because the overlap between Trump and the world of wrestling goes far beyond style. WWE was built by Vince McMahon and his then-wife, Linda McMahon, who now serves in Trump's cabinet as education secretary. Former Trump advisers have openly acknowledged that his campaigns borrowed tactics from wrestling and sports entertainment. Think about the scripted rivalries, the hyperbole, the crowd engagement, the creation of villains, often foreign ones . I'm Tanjal Rashid and you're listening to the new society from the New Statesman. Satirist Munya Chihuahua has been exploring just how deep those connections run in his new documentary, Wrestling with trump. In this episode he joins my colleague Luke O'Reilly to discuss the WWE president and what it means when politics becomes part of the spectacle . Munia, great to have you at the New Statesman. Thank you for having me, Luke. Um how's your week been? Uh it's been a really busy week. Uh and it feels like worlds are simultaneously collapsing because it's like the one week that Trump isn't doing stuff has like activated this whole new audience who would sort of dormant but actually have been wrestling fans all along. You know, just meeting even like uh every every type of demographic, like older, younger, all these people who've sort of like wrestling is buried deep in this sort of treasure chest of nostalgia. That's been really cool to see. And then to then go on to connect it to politics, you know? Well you've been a lifelong wrestling fan. Can you tell us about your earliest memories of wrestling? Oh, earliest memories. Okay. So I used to watch it on Saturday mornings with my grandad and I then also used to watch it in Zimbabwe. Because weirdly, I don't know what kind of like acquisition license they had in Zimbabwe, but the only thing on TV when we were growing up was either Jackie Chan films or wrestling. And I don't think the person in charge of Zimbabwe and TV knew the concept of pay-per-view. So you meant to pay like a hundred quid for WrestleMania, but they would just stick it on after Keenan and Kel. So we'd all go home from school and we'd watch the wrestling and then we'd go back into school the next day and sort of analyze it, but then also perform the moves. I think 90% of the detentions I received were for drop kicks in inappropriate places. And who was your favourite wrestler ? I loved a guy called Bill Goldberg. Absolutely huge behemoth of a man. And his special move was called The Spear, which is basically like a running high-speed rugby tackle. Are you a wrestling fan? Yeah, massive wrestling fan. You are. So you know the spear. I grew up in Ireland every single Saturday they'd have uh WWE on the television and I had a little wrestling ring when I was a kid that I could smack the figurines down. Yes, bro. So you know the spear, right? Yeah. The spear is like the r ofite passage for any wrestler. It was Goldberg's finisher, Edges finisher, Rhino , uh Roman Reigns does it now. It's like that's the one you gotta try. Did you ever hit the spear by the way? I think we attempted in school. Yeah. And we're getting a lot of trouble all the time. Exactly, bro. You haven't lived until you hit the spear. The number of birthday parties I was ejected from for performing that on the birthday boy on the bouncy castle, I I care not to to recollect, but yeah, Goldberg, obviously the rock. Um I could my eyebrows lend themselves quite well to the people's eyebrow. Can you give us your impression of the people's eyebrow? The people's eyebrow . It's pretty good, isn't it? That's really good. And this is this is how heavy the eyebrow actually is. So I'm not even doing anything. This is just me allowing the forehead to relax. Let's do yours. Oh I can't do it at all. I think I think if I do it looks like I'm squinting. Yeah, probably. I can do Steve Austin, that's it. Um so I mean for people who don't know a lot about wrestling, can you kind of give an explanation about it, like how much of it is choreographed? Okay, yeah, great question. So if you don't know wrestling, you probably think it's all about like the body slams and sweaty dudes elbow dropping each other, which it is, right? But the matches are quite short. So the job really of the storytellers and the producers is to weave this, d build these elaborate storylines that then make the sort of violent catharsis feel deserved, is earned. And so to do that, to do that, they'll use a number of storytelling devices. So for example, they will have the smack talk, which is what the rock and stone cold were notorious for. This is called cutting a promo. So this is saying the worst conceivable things about your opponent, driving the audience into a frenzy if you're the bad guy, if you're the good guy, even then it's about very violent ly uh you know, threatening your opponent but with a with a with a sort of a uh an artistic flair almost. You've got the foreign heel device, which is essentially creating this uh vessel through which you can sort of you can pulverize with patriotism. So uh historically we had uh villains like the Iron Sheik versus Hulk Hogan, Mohammed Hassan versus the Undertaker, Yokun Zuna . And this basically is to ramp up the patriotism and create these all American heroes like Hulk Hogan. And then finally you have the Kfabe. K-Fabe is your the pantomime aspect, the soap opera of wrestling. Is it real? Is it fake? We never know, but we tune in every week to find one more clue, maybe a piece of thread that unravels everything. By the time you put all of those into a cocktail shake and shake it all about, then you have your pay-per-view event. Everyone's tuned in. We're at fever pitch. Emotions are high. We're re we've earned the When did you start to realize that Trump was using these techniques? There was this absolutely bogus moment where I was on YouTube and I saw Hulk Hogan in a thumbnail, but the title was MAGA rally . So I thought, wait a minute. I clicked on it, and I'm seeing Hulk Hogan talking about how Trump's gonna save America, you know, Hulkomaniacs running wild, da da da, ripping his vest, which I'd only ever seen him do before laying the smackdown on a villain in wrestling, but this time he's doing it for Trump. And I thought, wait, this may maybe they there was a weird friendship between them I didn't know about. Then I see Trump on a podcast with Kane and The Undertaker, Triple H in the White House, Linda McMahon in the White House. The last time I saw Linda McMahon as a kid, she was in a storyline where Vince had put her into this weird coma and she's been pushed around in a wheelchair so that he could have an affair with one of the WWE divas . It it was like multiverses that should have never collided were suddenly collapsing in the middle. And that's when I thought, let's try pitch this as a doc. Because this would be crazy. Imagine if, like maybe the world's most powerful leader, is using wrestling as a source material. That was just a crazy hypothesis for me. And how did Trump build this relationship with wrestling? Trump was a wrestling fan. Not only a wrestling fan, but he to the extent where he would spend money to make wrestling happen, by which I mean he hosted WrestleMania's, which is like the magnum opus of wrestling pay-per-views, in his casinos. Um we speak to Bruce's uh Bruce's Beefcake in the documentary who talks about Trump flying out their family members and their friends who couldn't afford the tickets, putting them up in hotels so that they could come and enjoy the WrestleMania's, taking the wrestlers out for steak dinners. Um notoriously he, took part in a WrestleMania , the second most viewed Wrestlemania of all time, where him and Vince McMahon squared off in the ring and the loser had their head shaved live. Um we'll come back to that. But um Trump was a fan. You know, he he would attend even when he wasn't hosting, he was attending because he enjoyed it. We know Trump loves a strong man and and in the purest sense wrestling is strong men fighting. And so really that fulfilled uh this bloodlust that it often seems he has, you know? Can you talk about some of the techniques that Trump then uses in his campaigns? Yes. One thing that's really important to note is that Vince McMahon most likely was very aspirational to to Trump. They were contiguous . They were both young-ish , rich, Forbes, rich list . Trump would have taken a sideways glance at Vince, most likely, and gone, I like this guy's business model. Billionaire. He's got ar enas filled with people every week not only coming to see his business product but him as a product because Vince McMahon is one of the most notorious heels slash villains in wrestling. That would have been something that would have been a an amazing blueprint for Trump. You know, that that's a you know, that is uh that was a new target that he wasn't necessarily attaining through these long form sit-down interviews or being on the apprentice. You know, this was more of like a prime or gladiatorial level of fame where you've got people chanting your name. And um one of the contributors we speak to, Sam Numburg , former campaign advisor to Trump, in uh in our research chats, he would tell us that uh there were only two people that Trump took a private phone call from in private, and one of them was Vince McMahon. And you ask yourself, what what was spoken about on those phone calls? Because if any of it was around uh Vince's business model or the ways in which he succeeded in business. If you listen to Vince McMahon speak and you watch you know the Vince documentary, he talks about how controversy is the currency of success. It's about smashing the emotion button, uh playing to people's worst impulses. Uh we in wrestling we call it generating heat, which is this constant antagonizing of the crowd. Um if that is the one lesson that Vince passed on to Trump, I think we can both agree that that is certainly something we see now. And so if you pull up any Trump rally on YouTube and I say to you, Do you see do you ever see SmackTalk? Absolutely. Uh Crooked Hillary. Sleepy Joe. Wrestling Nicknames 101. Tonight an entire civilization will die. You say that in the ring. Hell yeah. Oh yeah, we're we're holding up our signs, we're screaming. That's great, Smack talk. The foreign heel. Has Trump ever utilized the foreign heel? Absolutely. Uh, you know, oh the Mexicans are rapists, Haitians are eating cats and dogs, Venezuela this, Iran that. That's the foreign hill right there. It's unifying the audience uh against an a foreign outsider who's threatening the American way of life. And then finally, has c has Trump ever used K Fabe? Have there has there ever been a time when Trump has said something, you weren't quite sure whether it was real or fake. When it worked, it was ah I told you it would work. And when it didn't, it was well you're you're an idiot for believing I could ever do it. Yes, absolutely. That's that's Trump 101. Whether it's talking about rain it's raising a golden statue of himself or ending the Ukraine war in 24 hours, it's so hard to pin an actual policy, pledge, or proposal on him because you're never quite sure if he's being serious. Those are the three magic ingredients of wrestling. And the one golden rule he never followed which every wrestling fan did was don't try this at home and that's why the repercussions feel and are so big, so deadly, so dire. Because not only were the moves never meant to leave the ring. Orso the device is used in wrestling in general . Stay with us we're going to take a short break we'll be back after this . Has wrestling been used before um historically for political reasons? Yes. So we speak to contributor in the doc um because aside from the WWE, you've got these weekly smaller promotions where you've got these, you know work,ing men and women who for the weekend put on the spandex and entertain the crowds with the pantomime tradition of wrestling. And one of the contributors is Bo James, who is a legend, by the way. And uh he talks about how how r way back when uh there was a a superstar called, I think he was called Mr. Wrestling, uh which was, you know, given not the most invented wrestling name, but uh he would come into town and the politicians would line up to get their picture taken with him. Because by association, if you were with one of these modern-day behemoths or, you know, sort of uh superheroes, incarnate wrestlers, it would do uh wonders for the polls, for the ratings just, by associ ation. And uh so Bo's theory in the doc is wrestling has always been used to get the public over. Uh because we have such strong connections to these real life superheroes. So absolutely it's been used historically. Trump has been described as a heel. What do you think his liberal critics don't understand about the performance that he's doing? Well, this is really interesting that you talk about this term heel, right? Because I'm gonna I'm gonna raise you on that. In so let's set the scene. In wrestling you have the babyface who's a hero, and then you have the heel, which is the bad guy. Okay. Even though low-key, we we we love we love a heel, you know, we tuned in for we tuned in as as much for the heroes we did for the villains. Now, Sam Numburg, uh Trump's former political campaign advisor, he said that Trump was the closest thing we have to Stone Cold , who he described as an iconoclastic uh anti-establishment heel, right? So he was basically saying Trump is a bad guy in the way that uh Stone Cold was a bad guy. Stone Cold was only a bad guy because he did all the naughty things you weren't meant to do, but he was doing them against the establishment, which kind of made him a good guy. He'd turn up in the ring, his signature taunt, as opposed to being, you know, raising one arm in victory or whatever, was to flip you off with both finger middle fingers. At the end of the match, he was catching beers from the crowd. People threw beers at him. He'd catch them, smash them in the middle, you know, get battered in the ring. Uh' hed drive up on a you know like a an ATV. He'd stomp a mud hole in your ass . He you know these are not the building blocks of the nice guy, but we loved it. You know, we love to see someone sticking it to the man. And that is how Sam said that Trump has positioned himself. He's not trying to be the nice guy. He's just trying to be like, guys, I'm here to raise hell against the establishment. Me, I'm one of you guys, but I'm just one brave enough to go and really stick two middle fingers up at the establishment. Despite the fact that my man , you know, business tycoon, uh entrepreneur, the multi- I mean multi-million, probably billion dollar property dynasty . The guy is establishment. And the ultimate K Fab is convincing people that he is one of them who just so happens to be brave enough to stick it to the men in power. He is the man in power. Is Nigel Farage a heel ? I well, for me, Nigel Farage is trying to copy and paste the Trump silhouette, as are so many populists. Trump uh I think it was Sasha Barron Cohen, who talks about this idea of silhouette creation when it comes to characters. So actually Baron Cohen, uh this silhouette theory is almost like any character you devise, you should be able to recognize from their silhouette. You know, with allergy, it was the the the the signs he'd hold up, you could see just the silhouette and you'd know it was the character of allergy. Trump is the ultimate silhouette creator. You think about the quiff, you know, you think about the tiny T-Rex hands, you know, jerking off these imaginary ghosts every time he's on at a rally dancing. That's the Trump silhouette. Every everyone knows that . That is the dream for someone like Faraj, I think, is to be so popular and to have such a strong brand image, everyone knows who he is. You know, I think he gets a lot of gratification from that. Um I think that I suppose what I'm saying is that Trump learned from wrestling and and other politicians are learning from Trump. And in wrestling, it's not about having, you know, a a strong sort of contingent of support. It's about being lionized. It's about being worshipped. People would turn up to those arenas with signs with the rock's face on it. Rocky, notice me. The rock's uh catchphrases on their shirt, tattooed on their arm. You know, it's about being worshipped. If you're a hero in wrestling or even a villain, it's about being worshipped. And that's what Trump wants as well. That's what Trump gets at his rallies. I think deep down, uh, you know, Farage would love to turn up to the next Reform Party conferences to see people holding his face on a sign or the those uh iconic reform football t-shirts. That he you he wants that. And so um if Trump ha sorry, if wrestling has laid the blueprint for Trump, it unfortunately vicariously has has laid the blueprint for modern day populist politicians as well. Do you think Keir Starmer should watch wrestling? Do I think Keir Starmer should watch wrestling ? Well, first of all , you know, the I I don't I don't know whether we would have the same fandom for Kirstalmer. Because, you know, as you see in the documentary, uh, we turn up to this Tuesday tri esday Trump's to Triumphs Drinking Club, which it just makes no sense as a name. But it was just a load of people who turned up to get smashed for Trump every Tuesday. Starmer Slurp Club, for example. I can't imagine Starmer rallying people in the way that all the greatest wrestlers of all time did. And actually, you know, I would discourage uh Starmer from heading towards a WWE style of politics because the WWE prioritises entertainment over ethics, you know, by its very nature. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I enjoyed it when I watched wrestling. And it doesn't prioritize you know, it doesn't certainly doesn't prioritize the truth . You know, that's what K-Fab's all about. It's making you uh you know tr constantly go back and forth between what's true and what's not. So I don't think we need that in politics. I actually think we need more honesty. Because I think the most dangerous thing about Trump, if he has taken from wrestling, the wor the the most dangerous worst thing he could have taken from it is Kfabe, okay? Because Kfabe in wrestling is fantastic because it just makes for one big sweaty soap opera . But Kfabe in politics is almost like Kevlar, it's like body armor. Because it means you can never be wrong. Um if you utilize Kfabe as a politician, if you say something absolutely heinous and it works, people are like, oh my God, I can't believe you pulled off that one in a million political heist. You're a legend . If it doesn't work, the politician can just turn around and be like, how you were so stupid to believe I could ever do that. And what that ultimately means is they're not falsifiable. They can never be wrong. And if you can ever be wrong, why would you ever need to be removed as a as a politician? If you've done nothing wrong, technically you should be able to stay there forever. You're omnipotent, you're all powerful, you're all knowing. And it creates these godlike entities who cannot be flawed or faltered or questioned. And that's when we move into really dangerous territory. Politics should always work in a way such that if you violate Has politics become too entertaining? American politics, certainly. You know, it's a circus. And it's always been you a as Brits, as a as as the ever cynical Brits, it's always been such an alien concept to us to see, you know, people holding up signs for their politicians. God forbid we'd ever do that in England. I think we're we're we're far too cynical for that. Um I don't think that Brit ish politics is entertaining at the moment because in the House of Commons it's still very orderly, and you know, there's a little bit of smack talk there, but it's definitely become we definitely have more populism. And that really makes me worried because it seems like there's a huge swath of people of the electorate who are unable to to see it being worked on them, to see that they're being whipped up. Um I always try and use the analogy of, you know, popul , you know, even I could be uh uh you know populist. I could say, guys, I could sit on this podcast with you and say , uh, Luke, you know, it's just such a shame that I'm not an MP man, because what I would do is I would make sure that everyone gets seen in A and E within three minutes tops, that an ambulance gets to your door in five minutes. I'd do like a bonus, ten grand for every family in the UK, just to make sure that we're all able to afford our food shops. And you say to me, money, that sounds amazing. Like you should run for MP. And I go, Well, you know, it's just a shame I I'll never make it happen because I'm I'll never be elected. Do you know what I mean? No one would ever elect me. And so what it does is I know I'm so far away from power, I can say these things because I'll never have to prove them. And you know, Farage has been so good at saying these things, knowing he's just far enough away from ever being PM that he will never be able to be able to falsify those theories. As he's getting closer , it'll be interesting to see how many of those promises sort of drop back . Uh but the knock-on effect of that is that you've got someone like Keir Starmer who is on the pitch but is playing and pandering to the man shouting from the sidelines, Ref, bring me on, I'd score ten goals in ten minutes. Which is Farage. Kia, you're on the pitch, mate. Don't worry about who's on the sideline saying what. You've got the ball. So do the right thing with You've been listening to the New Society from the New Statesman with Luke O'Reilly and Munya Chihuahua. The podcast will be back next week.