REVEALED: Trump Sells His B.S. With Ease Because ‘WWE Primed A Generation For Trump’ Pretending

The appeal of Donald Trump has long been a mystery to so many. The advent of him on the political scene is frightening because it demonstrates conclusively that image is everything, superseding ability. That is beyond frightening, it’s terrifying. If the office of president of the United States is now going to be a TV popularity contest, helmed by people with money and public personas, throwing out zingers and offering simplistic, broad brush solutions to complex and nuanced problems, Idiocracy, we are there.

The next question is always, how did we get here? A new book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon And The Unmaking Of America shows how Trump learned from the world of wresting how to blend fact and fiction into a public display that people buy. Trump is to politics what World Wrestling Entertainment is to sports. He’s not doing politics anymore than they’re doing life and death grappling. Both are doing a bastardization of the genre, designed to shock and entertain, only.

The difference is that wrestling is playacting that generates money and doesn’t hurt anybody. Playacting in politics is deadly — ask the survivors of the 350,831 people who died of COVID in 2020 because Trump and Fox News were busy convincing people it was a hoax. And ask Dr. Fauci why he has to hire security guards to protect himself and his family because right-wing media pundits talk about executing him in the public square.

Popular Information interviewed the author and they discussed the book as it pertains to Trump, who is besties with Vince McMahon and has performed at wrestling events. What you’re about to read is terrifying, if true, but unfortunately it makes a lot of sense.

Trump fans, like modern wrestling fans, understand that most things Trump says aren’t real:

This [wrestling] ecosystem allows people to do horrible things and still succeed, even among people who are offended by the things that are being done and said. Because you operate from the assumption that everything you’re seeing in the ring is fake, or at least most of it. And that’s dangerous, because once you’re assuming everything’s fake, except for the things you want to believe are true, then you’re just having a grab bag, personalized reality. So you can go, if you’re a Trump voter, “Trump means it when he says [X], but he doesn’t mean it when he says [Y].” And once you start just picking and choosing what you think reality is from a grab bag of truth and lies that you can’t distinguish between, then you’re in real trouble as a society. Every individual person is just picking their own hodgepodge reality.

The neo-kayfabe mindset is, “take it seriously, but not literally.” Take the excitement as something that is a force to be reckoned with, but don’t actually believe any of the content. That’s wrestling. You’re gonna have a thrill, but don’t actually believe anything that’s happening, except for the whispered part, which is, except believe the parts that you want to believe, those parts are true. And then people can just completely lose their minds.

This we have seen. This is what led directly to January 6.

Trump, like McMahon, is popular because of — not in spite of  — his transgressions:

Trump is very good at pressing buttons, as Vince is. They’re very good at finding the parts of your brain that make you the most riled up and just mashing that button, just making you as amped up, or angry, or both, as you can be. He throws out these transgressive pieces of red meat. And if you’re on his team, that’s very exciting for you, if you’re not on his team, it’s also very exciting for you, but in a negative way. The point is, you’re excited, and you’re paying attention to him. And that’s a great strategy for him. And people really enjoy it. Like they don’t want to admit it, and it’s not a good thing that they enjoy it. But the human brain is what it is, and it likes when people break the rules. Even if you wouldn’t break the rule, there’s something titillating about seeing somebody who has no regard for the rules. All of these [WWE] characters are so ludicrously transgressive, and that appeals to people. And that transgression can come in the form of saying something horrifying that you don’t agree with as a viewer, or it can come in the form of that same character saying something totally true that you do agree with, but you can’t believe was said in public.

This is spot on. Trump is a button pusher. No argument.

On how WWE primed a generation for Trump:

You can’t deny that millennial boys grew up watching Stone Cold Steve Austin, and then the Rock and Triple H, and all these other people in that mold. These are people who are not quite face, not quite heel, but beloved by the crowd, despite their evil acts. Millennial boys shaped their whole worldviews when they’re 11 to 15 around that sense of morality. Not: Is it good, or is it evil? Just: Is it exciting? Is it cool? That’s what the premium is placed on. And that’s true now in politics, too. Maybe it’s always been true in politics to a certain extent. But right now, the thing that grabs people to vote is very often just: Do I find this person entertaining, recognizable, iconic, or funny? As opposed to: Will this person do a good job in the elected office that I’m voting for them for? And wrestling turned that into a science.

Color me gobsmacked, because this does make sense. But the problem here is, if there are enough people who think this way and will vote for a trash TV entertainer, which is all, and I mean ALL that Trump is or ever was, for the highest office in our land, then we are toast. And obviously Vivek Ramaswamy believes that this is the way things are going, he’s cut from the same mold as Trump. He’s a billionaire with legal problems, zero political experience and he knows how to do TV. He’s going to rap his way into the White House, or try, and he has nothing of substance to bring to the world’s hardest job.

There’s no question that people vote viscerally. That’s long been understood. But the presumption has always been, between two people who are qualified, who does your gut tell you to go with? If we throw out qualifications and just go for the gut, between an entertainer and a real politician, or between two entertainers, if things would ever get that weird, where are we going to be as a country? Answer: gone.

People keep saying Trump has a reasonable chance of being reelected. I don’t see it. But then I didn’t see it the first time, either, and it happened. But we do have a different playing field this time. Trump was already defeated once, ergo he’s not as bullet proof as he would have once had you believe he was.

And his situation since being defeated has deteriorated. He was voted out because he was so awful in the job when he did it. His track record is still there, plus the fact of his considerable baggage of four indictments and having been found civilly liable for rape charges. Plus, all that and having been entered into the Congressional Record as a rapist has certainly not enhanced his reputation. I don’t see his status as an anti-hero getting him put back in office, unless this country is a lot more screwed up than I think.

Personally, I’m going with the reality of the past three elections. I believe Trump is going to tank the GOP into oblivion. And they deserve it. We’re not going to wake up from this national nightmare overnight because we didn’t get here overnight. I think Trump is going to lose, again, and so is the GOP and we can figure out where things are going from there when we see who’s actually still left standing after the dust settles.