Trump’s link to the 'lies' of staged wrestling exposed in new documentary

Comedian and satirist Munya Chawawa’s documentary “Wrestling With Trump” punches President Donald Trump in ways he should have been punched at the very beginning of his political career, says Guardian writer Lucy Mangan.

“Trump is the ultimate showman. He’s a master of it, a billionaire Barnum, but with a greed so insatiable it moves him ever further from entertainment into malevolence,” Mangun said. “If the Democrats had realized this earlier and recognized the strength the man was playing to and the particular voting public weaknesses he was preying upon, instead of sneering with distaste, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

Chawawa, however, takes the “underused idea” that Trump and his team’s campaigns and style of government “use the same playbook as that created by the U.S. pro-wrestling industry’s most famous promoters, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE),” said Mangan.

The connection is more than obvious, added Mangan. World Wrestling Entertainment was founded by Vince McMahon and his since-estranged wife, Linda. Vince quit the business 2024 in the wake of allegations of sex trafficking and sexual assault, but his wife Linda is now the U.S. secretary of education.

One of the most-recognized tropes of fake wrestling is its habit of dividing “heroes” (white Americans) and villains (non-American, non-white Americans) with “Babyfaces” (good guys who play by the rules) “Heels” (who aren’t and don’t).

It works in the ring and at political rallies, said Chawawa, who notices Trump’s use of trash talk and his alienation of brown people to “rouse the bloodlust” and “make [voters] commit” to a world leader “who promises to rid the world of all the people perceived to be the cause” of white voters’ frustrations.

And then there’s the wrestling industry’s use of “kayfabe,” and its blurring of the lines between truth and lies. Chawawa, in his documentary, “speaks to MAGA folk who can call Trump a “blue collar billionaire” without batting an eyelid. It’s a sign of the “astonishing power” Trump has “to warp the senses, collapse contradictions and reconstruct a reality that suits him better,” reports Mangun.

“Kayfabe, in wrestling, is the pretense that everything is real – that the invective is unscripted, that the Heels’ and heroes’ backstories are authentic, that the moves are unchoreographed, and that the body slams, hip checks and chokeholds are as dangerous and painful as they look. For as long as the fight lasts, you live the illusion. Nothing is true except what you are told you see.”

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