Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rickfoster/8760051427
I recently watched Mr. McMahon, the Netflix documentary on WWE titan Vince McMahon. It was entertaining on several levels but the one part that stuck was the section on Donald Trump. Vince kinda sorta took credit for Trump’s ascendency to the White House. Not through any sort of cross promotion or campaign donation or even strategy. Vince’s claim, which I believe, is that Trump learned from WWE wrestlers how to be a performer and then appropriated that to his public image.
It is something that now feels blindingly obvious in retrospect. The boasting, the narcissism, feeding off both the audience’s adulation and the scorn of one’s enemies—these are all traits that Vince and Triple H and Steve Austin have been honing for decades.
I recently read a quote from a swing voter who had decided to support Trump, saying “At least he’s an honest liar.” Out of context, that sentence makes no sense. And yet, I know exactly what he means.
I found professional wrestling to be more entertaining once I learned it was all fake. You become more focused on the personalities and how they perform for the crowd. With Trump, most of his supporters know he is lying when he gets up on stage and makes outrageous claims. But they know this is part of the act, and they find it entertaining enough to put up with all the corruptiony stuff that gets reported on in The New York Times.
Yes, the WWE heel is not a good person and all of the fans know that. You know who else isn’t good? The arena’s security guards who keep pulling fans out of the stands for holding up offensive homemade signs, escorting them out of the building, and putting them in cuffs. Only they are not a part of the show. And when the heel, in full character, promises to demolish those security guards, whose side will the fans be on?
When I think of all of the presidents of my lifetime, I can surmise a reason that compelled them to run for the executive office. Some feel overregulation has harmed small businesses, others feel inequality has made it near impossible for people to succeed without a robust welfare system. But for the life of me, I cannot think of a consequentialist reason that Trump wants to be president, what he gets out of it. I think he simply likes being president, all the pomp and circumstance and attention.
So here is my goal for the next 4 years: I am not going to give him the thing he wants, my attention. If Ezra Klein does a 3 hour podcast episode about what to expect from Trump's first term I will gladly skip over that and wait for him to interview someone about AI. If The Atlantic runs a column about how broad tariffs or DEI crackdowns are terrible, I’m not going to read those.
Inevitably, I will hear about some policies he has passed and what they have done. But I don’t care and don’t want to know about the latest outrageous thing he says. He is not worthy of my attention or frustration.
It is something that now feels blindingly obvious in retrospect. The boasting, the narcissism, feeding off both the audience’s adulation and the scorn of one’s enemies—these are all traits that Vince and Triple H and Steve Austin have been honing for decades.
I recently read a quote from a swing voter who had decided to support Trump, saying “At least he’s an honest liar.” Out of context, that sentence makes no sense. And yet, I know exactly what he means.
I found professional wrestling to be more entertaining once I learned it was all fake. You become more focused on the personalities and how they perform for the crowd. With Trump, most of his supporters know he is lying when he gets up on stage and makes outrageous claims. But they know this is part of the act, and they find it entertaining enough to put up with all the corruptiony stuff that gets reported on in The New York Times.
Yes, the WWE heel is not a good person and all of the fans know that. You know who else isn’t good? The arena’s security guards who keep pulling fans out of the stands for holding up offensive homemade signs, escorting them out of the building, and putting them in cuffs. Only they are not a part of the show. And when the heel, in full character, promises to demolish those security guards, whose side will the fans be on?
When I think of all of the presidents of my lifetime, I can surmise a reason that compelled them to run for the executive office. Some feel overregulation has harmed small businesses, others feel inequality has made it near impossible for people to succeed without a robust welfare system. But for the life of me, I cannot think of a consequentialist reason that Trump wants to be president, what he gets out of it. I think he simply likes being president, all the pomp and circumstance and attention.
So here is my goal for the next 4 years: I am not going to give him the thing he wants, my attention. If Ezra Klein does a 3 hour podcast episode about what to expect from Trump's first term I will gladly skip over that and wait for him to interview someone about AI. If The Atlantic runs a column about how broad tariffs or DEI crackdowns are terrible, I’m not going to read those.
Inevitably, I will hear about some policies he has passed and what they have done. But I don’t care and don’t want to know about the latest outrageous thing he says. He is not worthy of my attention or frustration.
