Donald Trump has always been the Great Pretender. He pretended to be a successful businessman on “The Apprentice,” a “reality” TV show that masked his myriad business failures, including Atlantic City casinos that declared bankruptcy. More recently, he was fined more than $450 million and barred from running businesses, including his namesake company, in New York for three years as the result of a civil business fraud trial.
Trump pretended to be a successful president — claiming to be respected by world leaders for his toughness and ability to find common-sense solutions to the nation’s problems. Instead, a survey of 154 presidential historians conducted by the American Political Science Association, ranked Trump as the worst president in U.S. history.
But amidst a sea of failures, there was place where Donald Trump was right in his own element and quite successful — and that was World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the entertainment conglomerate that pretends to be a sport. As an entertainer, Trump could follow the prepared scripts and create a fake persona as a fabulously wealthy tough guy who wouldn’t back down from a fight.
And in 2013, Trump was recognized for his contributions to the pretend sport by being inducted into the Celebrity Wing of the WWE Hall of Fame — a distinction that no other U.S. president can claim.
Trump indeed has always been proud of his connection to the WWE.
At the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Trump took the fog-shrouded stage on the first night to the ominous R.I.P. entrance theme music used by the WWE wrestler known as The Undertaker. That should have been warning enough of the disaster to come from a Trump presidency.
When Trump took the stage for his Jan. 20, 2017, inauguration at the Capitol — where his supporters would riot four years later — he used his own WWE entrance theme music —”Money, Money, Money (Money in the Bank).”
So when your first term was an unmitigated disaster and your second term promises to be even worse thanks to Project 2025, what does the twice-impeached, four-times indicted Don the Convicted Felon do? He turns the final night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee into WWE theme night.
On Thursday night you could see on full display the result of an obsessive combination of celebrity, entertainment and politics. Trump and his MAGA cultists created a real-life version of the 2006 Mike Judge film “Idiocracy,” the sci-fi comedy about a future America overrun by dummies who have elected a former pro wrestling champ (played by Terry Crews of “America’s Got Talent”) as president.
Back in February 2016, as Trump emerged as a serious presidential contender, the film’s co-writer Etan Cohen envisioned the future when he posted this on Twitter: “I never expected idiocracy to become a documentary.”
And he was right. And that’s what happened Thursday night at the Republican convention when four people linked to the WWE took the stage before Trump’s acceptance speech.
First up was Linda McMahon, who co-founded WWE with her husband Vince, but quit her post as CEO in 2009 for the first of two unsuccessful campaigns for the U.S. Senate from Connecticut. Trump appointed her as the Administrator of the Small Business Association and she now chairs the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute.
McMahon spoke about Trump’s connection to the WWE:
”I first met Donald Trump when I was the CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. For fun, he became part of some of the most compelling and highest-rated storylines in the company’s history,” she said.
That storyline she was referring to was the 2007 Battle of the Billionaires between Trump and Vince McMahon. It culminated at WrestleMania 23 in which Trump’s champion, Black wrestler Bobby Lashley, defeated McMahon’s champion, a Samoan wrestler oddly enough named Umaga, and McMahon ended up getting his head shaved. Two years later Umaga died at age 36 of a heart attack brought about by substance abuse.
For those who haven’t seen it here’s Donald Trump in the Battle of the Billionaires.
Trump did get a smackdown after the match from the referee, wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin, which can be seen here.
Linda McMahon also spoke out in support of Trump’s proposals to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent and offer new tax cuts, while putting tariffs on Chinese imports. Trump’s policy would certainly benefit her as Forbes Magazine estimates Vince McMahon’s fortune at $2.9 billion. But 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists recently warned that Trump’s proposals would not only make inflation worse, but also have “a destabilizing effect on the U.S.'s domestic economy.”
She concluded by declaring that Trump “has the heart of a lion and the soul of a warrior … who would stand at the gates of hell to defend our country.” That’s something Trump failed to do when a friendly podiatrist diagnosed him with bone spurs in 1968 so he could get a medical deferment from the draft at the height of the Vietnam War.
As for Vince McMahon, he had to step down from his position as executive chairman and board member of TKO Group Holding’s, WWE’s parent company, after former employee Janel Grant filed a lawsuit alleging that McMahon took part in sex trafficking and put her through sexual acts that were done with “extreme cruelty and degradation.” Grant agreed in May to pause her case pending a federal investigation, her lawyer said.
Next up Thursday night was Hulk Hogan, billed by convention organizers as “a former professional entertainer and wrestler.” The former WWE star threw red meat to the audience in a speech that resembled his past promos for WrestleMania and other WWE events.
Hogan, 70, whose real name is Terry G. Bollea, said Trump would bring “America back together, one real American at a time.” And then Hogan ripped off his suit jacket and shirt to reveal a red Trump-Vance tank top, and bellowed :
”But what happened last week when they took a shot at my hero and they tried to kill the next president of the United States, enough was enough!
“And I said let Trump-a-mania run wild, brother! Let Trump-a-mania rule again! Let Trump-a-mania make America great again!”
Now Hulk Hogan’s career has been marked by a series of scandals that actually put him right up there with Trump. The most damaging scandal came in 2015 when The National Enquirer reported that Hogan had been caught on an unauthorized sex tape in which he unleashed a bigoted attack, frequently using the N-word and other racial slurs, because he was upset with his daughter Brooke for sleeping with a Black man. Hogan admitted he was “a racist.”
The story was confirmed by CNN and other mainstream news outlets and Hogan apologized for using “offensive” language.” Hogan was fired by the WWE and removed from its Hall of Fame, but he was reinstated three years later..
Hogan also shares a link with Vice Presidential nominee, Sen. J.D. Vance, a protege of tech billionaire Peter Thiel who poured million’s into Vance’s Senate campaign. Thiel was reported to be the secret financial backer in Hogan’s legal fight against Gawker Media which published excerpts of the sex tape on its website. Thiel was upset because Gawker had outed him as gay.
Hogan won the invasion-of-privacy lawsuit in 2016 and a Florida jury ordered Gawker to pay the wrestler $140 million. Gawker filed for bankruptcy and was shut down.
And then it fell to another WWE Hall of Fame celebrity member to warm up the crowd before Trump took the stage. So you had Kid Rock screaming into the microphone “Fight, Fight, Fight” and “Trump, Trump, Trump.” while the screens behind him displayed burning flames.
Kid Rock performed “American Badass,” which gained notoriety in the WWE as the entrance theme for The Undertaker.
Kid Rock wrapped up his performance by telling the crowd: “Get ready for the most patriotic American badass on Earth: President Donald J. Trump.”
Kid Rock has been caught up in so many controversies that Billboard had to publish a timeline in 2021. Billboard introduced the article by writing:
Kid Rock has been embroiled in many controversies over the last two decades for his use of the Confederate flag, his ultra-conservative political stances, and his tirades against prominent female singers, from Beyoncé to Taylor Swift.
Most recently, during Pride Month, the 50-year-old artist was caught using a homophobic slur onstage and later defended himself by using the same slur again in a combative response to the controversy.
But there was one more badass to come before Trump took the stage. At both the 2016 and 2020 Republican conventions, Ivanka Trump introduced her father before his acceptance speech and she was sitting there Thursday night in the VIP box.
But instead the honor of introducing Trump went to Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White. Last year, the UFC, a mixed martial arts promotion company, officially merged with the WWE to form one company known as TKO. Trump gave White’s struggling company a boost in the early 2000s when he let the UFC use his Atlantic City casinos for events.
And, of course, White echoed the evening’s theme that Trump is “a fighter.” He said:
“I’m in the tough guy business, and this man is the toughest, most resilient human being that I’ve ever met in my life. … ”In my mind, the choice is clear, but this election we all get to choose. … I’m going to choose real American leadership and a real American badass.”
As part of the UFC, White also runs a company called Power Slap, which promotes face slapping fights. Unfortunately, White and his wife Anne got caught on tape slapping each other in the face during a heated altercation after they both were drinking on New Year’s Eve in 2022 at a bar in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
After the incident, Dana White released a statement to TMZ, saying there were no excuses for his actions, adding, “There’s never, ever an excuse for a guy to put his hands on a woman.”
After White’s introduction, it was time for some real Trumpmania as the convicted felon who pretends he’s an “American badass” lied and rambled his way through a speech that broke his own record for the longest-ever convention nomination acceptance speech.
The GOP had declared the theme of the convention’s closing night to be “Make America Great Once Again.”
But with the lineup of WWE-linked speakers — and such other luminaries as lawyer Alina Habba, ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson and fail-son Eric Trump, the GOP campaign slogan actually should be “Make America An Idiocracy.”