Sad but true - Donald Trump really did wrestle his way into the White House | David Moon

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

85% : For Donald Trump, though, professional wrestling is a lifelong passion.
78% : Long before McMahon's nomination, Trump was the first occupant of the Oval Office to be a WWE Hall of Fame inductee, an honour that marked his decades-long business relationship with the company.
54% : For his part, Donald Trump participated in a Fox News segment with former WWE superstar Tyrus, who dubbed him "the people's champion" and gave him a replica title belt.
52% : A former boxing promoter, Trump has become a fixture at combat sports in general, especially Ultimate Fighting Championship (which merged with WWE to form the media conglomerate TKO in 2023), whose CEO, Dana White, was one of the first people brought on stage at his victory speech.
50% : It's now widely acknowledged that pro wrestling is key to Trump as a political phenomenon.
50% : Yet its influence is bigger than Trump.
44% : Trump has hosted two WrestleManias, the WWE's flagship annual event, appeared more than a dozen times on WWE programmes, played a leading role in two storylines, and gotten physical (albeit to a very limited, awkward degree) around the ring itself.
41% : Trump rallies are safe spaces where it's acceptable to emote: to shout and cheer for your country and candidate, while vocalising hatred for political opponents.
38% : Watch the post-election footage of Donald Trump emerging to the strains of Kid Rock's American Badass - the Undertaker's previous entrance music - through the roaring crowd of a recent UFC event and it's impossible not to make the connection.
36% : Trump and his supporters are an extreme case of a wider phenomenon.
35% : Trump frequently resorts to call-and-response chants and indulges in "smack talk" against the "losers and haters" - assigning them diminishing nicknames such as "lyin' Ted", "crooked Hillary" and "sleepy Joe".
34% : By attaching himself to entertainment forms widely dismissed in polite society, Trump burnishes his anti-establishment vibes while reaching out to a younger, often politically apathetic, male electorate that populates these fandoms.
16% : What makes Trump special is thus not that he personifies "pro wrestlingified" politics, but that his supporters are willing to suspend their disbelief and support his campaign when its fakery is so blatant.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.