“You’re paying attention, and that’s all that matters”: Donald Trump Owes a Lot of His ‘Political Style’ to Vince McMahon After Ex-WWE Head Changed the Industry Forever

Beyond the superficial similarities between wrestling and politics (more on that later), one could argue that Vince McMahon’s playground stands as a direct inspiration for the political chessboard that Donald Trump navigates.

The commonality between the world of politics and wrestling is a neat one, overlapping in segments where one party overpowers and dominates the other while the crowd hoots, hollers, cheers, and boos on behalf of their respective champions.

And while things tend to get bloodier and messier within the rings of WWE, the world of politics is more about hits and near-misses as witnessed in, say failed assassination attempts on certain presumptive Presidential candidates.

In reality, however, the spilling of blood on the floors of both houses — be it democracy or World Wrestling Entertainment — is inevitable. What matters most is who walks out of the ring claiming victory for himself while the other licks their wound on display for the world to see.

Vince McMahon Changes the Face of WWE

Within the professional wrestling industry, there has hardly been a name as instantly recognizable and influential as Vince McMahon who, for the lack of a better term, might even be considered the father of modern WWE. His rise in the 1950s paired with his increasingly widening network of connections within the political and corporate realms of America, served as the foundation of his life’s work.

This then made McMahon a figurehead of corporate America with powerful political connections who was loved by the common masses of the US and Canada for serving them with consummate entertainment via wrestling. Such power isn’t achieved overnight, thus inspiring those with ambition to reach for the stars and never stop until they’ve held the entire world in the palm of their grubby little hands.

Among those inspired parties was a young Donald Trump whose love for McMahon and wrestling in the ’50s eventually served as the blueprint for his own political ambition 70 years down the line.

Vince McMahon Inspires Donald Trump’s Rise to Power

If the treacherous waters of American politicking have proven one thing, it’s that the central conceit known as kayfabe within the world of WWE has never been more relatable than when applied to Donald Trump and his rise to power. In the words of American comedian Akaash Singh, “The greatest likable heel we’ve ever seen [is] Donald Trump” [via Flagrant].

Vince McMahon’s approach to building a cult-like following depended on turning an extremely silly sport into a gladiator-like arena – spilling blood and breaking bones for the entertainment of the masses to satiate their suppressed animalistic impulses. However, he did not rely on just the physicality of the sport but its delivery and presentation as well – the gladiators standing on the elevated stage to receive a Roman greeting and thunderous screaming from the masses.

A lot of the presentation within the world of WWE then depends on manipulating reality and offering illusions falsely represented as truth to cater to the audiences and their tastes. They should have their money’s worth, after all, and as long as they liked what they saw, it should be enough to hold their loyalty and attention in favor of one party over the other.

Donald Trump’s political style somewhat mimics what Vince McMahon achieved in the wrestling industry over the past couple of decades. Former mixed martial artist and analyst, Chael Sonnen even went so far as to claim that “[Trump’s] campaign is exactly the way Vince promotes Wrestlemania,” after revealing how the latter invested $8 million in his Presidential campaign while other investors were busy cutting ties and canceling their checks.

Abraham Josephine Riesman, author of McMahon’s unauthorized biography, titled Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, claimed:

[Trump’s style] is not just political kayfabe. There’s kayfabe, and then there’s what Vince really pioneered, which is neokayfabe, a term I made up.

After Vince made it a part of public record that wrestling was fake, that led to sort of the end of the illusion that wrestling was a legitimate, unplanned competition in the sporting realm.

Neokayfabe is when you operate not on the assumption of telling the audience, “Hey, everything you’re about to see is real.” You start by giving them the assumption, “Hey, everything you’re about to see is fake — except the parts that you think are real.”

It’s Trumpism. You’re left to kind of choose your own reality. So whether you are just taking it in and not trying to sort out what’s real, or whether you’re obsessively trying to sort it into true and false, you’re paying attention, and that’s all that matters.

In the end, while McMahon’s playbook may not have been as aggressive in its ultimate objective, Donald Trump’s kayfabe is far more ruthless and scarier in its implications of global dominance as compared to the former WWE Chief’s Machiavellian manipulations.