M.
Donald Trump is standing in the middle of a packed auditorium. The sense of excitement is palpable, the air full of tension and testosterone. He is commanding the moment. Except this is not a Trump rally. It's w w E. First of all, that's.
You're great friends are no match for my Trump towers.
And Trump is here to battle it out against w w a's billionaire founder Bence McMahon. The host, don't play over. I'm Donald Trump, that McMahon, that's happened Russel Lady twenty three from Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven AM, the now infamous Battle of the Billionaires. It's not the only time Trump's appeared in WWE. He's even got a
spot in the Sports Hall of Fame. But this two thousand and seven match against Prince McMahon was a sign of Trump's deep connection to pro wrestling, which has shaped how he speaks and how he does politics. It's also a sign of Trump's long standing friendship with McMahon, which he has rewarded by giving his ex wife Linda McMahon the Royal Secretary of Education in his new cabinet. Today
contributed to the Saturday Paper. Joseph Herb on how Donald Trump brought the art of pro wrestling into politics and how it helped make him popular. It's Thursday, December five. Joseph, Let's talk about the WWE World Wrestling Entertainment. When did you first watch it and what did you love about I.
Think I first encountered it when I was very young. Like a lot of people of my generation, it was something that was always in the kind of background culturally, and I remember going up the road there were like a bunch of boys who lived a couple of doors up and they were obsessed with it, and it was one of those things where I was younger, I was on the outer and getting into wrestling was a way of kind of connecting with them and getting in with them, hopeful, ready for WrestleMania.
Give me your hell, Yeah, you damn right, because Dom col Steve Austin has been shirked around long enough.
And I remember finding it kind of shocking and strange and just being enthralled.
It is in all its fiery sight to see this ring so ragged by these ways in one of these men, ladies, the gentlemen will be.
Bored tonight and It's one of those things that more recently that I guess I've studied really seeing it as a real art form that also has moments which are moving and beautiful and authentic, and I think that's exactly what wrestling is.
And at the center of it all was the owner of WWA, Vince mcmham. Can you tell me a lot about him and the character that he started to play as he grew out watching.
Yeah, Vince McMahon is a really interesting character. Vince was involved in the world of wrestling since the sixties. Before Vince, the wrestling territories were all separate and he was the man who kind of brought them together and united them and created the WWE. He was a commentator, but it wasn't known for some time that he was the man calling the shots until it kind of leaked. It became
public knowledge. He started to attract a lot of negative attention from wrestling audiences for the decisions he was making as the man in charge.
He is the owner of the World Wrestling Federation.
It's McMahon.
Well, you didn't have the longer they I reflect, and because he's a very kind of shrewd businessman and creative force he realized that he could use that negative attention from crowds, and he used that heat and turned himself into a character. So for many years he played a wrestling character called mister McMahon, who was an extension of his real life persona. He was, you know, wearing these big, boxy suits and he was strutting into the ring.
You are bought it line and sacer you are line.
They didn't even my family, even my immediate family bought it.
Every damn one of you were made fools.
So he played this kind of arch villain in wrestling storylines for many, many years as the Evil Boss who was this craven capitalist whose catchphrase was You're fired.
Screw you, You're fired. Would it be right to say that he sounds a little bit like Donald Trump? I think so.
I mean Trump and Vince are close friends. There's a writer called Abraham Josephine Riceman who wrote a biography of Vince, who has made a pretty convincing case that Vince is one of Trump's closest friends. I think Trump was drawn to Vince. I mean, Trump is called Vince a great man.
Vince is an amazing man.
He really is.
I mean, we're kid, and we have fun.
But everybody knows he's an amazing guy.
As these stories that when Trump was last president, when Vince would call, Trump would clear the room in order to talk to him. And the WWE has its Hall of Fame, and it's an honor that has been bestowed on Donald Trump, who is an official WWE Hall of Fame inductee.
Is my just think honor to introduce you to the newest of the w Hall of Fame class of twenty thirteen. So, I Vince seems to have really inspired Trump.
I think we can really see that Trump has modeled his persona on Vince McMahon, not only in the cadence of Trump's speech that kind of rambly, insulting, kind of generating nicknames, going for jokes, going for laughlines and applause lines.
You've called women you don't like, fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals.
Your Twitter account.
Only rotte O'donald.
Hillary Clynton, commonly referred to as Crooked Hillary, thinks that you you, all of you are deplorable and totally irredeemable, like we need help to beat sleep be Joe Biden.
I don't think so.
That is very very wrestling, and in particular that's very Vince, but also just the content of what Trump says, like even if you hate me, you're still paying attention to me, and you're still obsessed with me, And that's a very old wrestling trick. I mean, there was a rally earlier this year where he played a super cut of Kamala Harris just mentioning Trump over and over, just constantly talking about.
Him regard it didn't allow that to happen. Last night, a couple of made a speech, not much of one were they paid for audience, and all she talked about was Donald Trump.
Everyone tonight I will speak about Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Donald.
And I think that's very heel. It's like, even if you hate me, how come I'm on your brains all the time. So there's this incredibly close friendship between by all reports, between Vince and Trump, and it's a case of the two men influencing and shaping each other to both of the benefit. And that's paid off in a big way, I think for Trump in terms of it
being a key way that he has created popularity. And it's also paid off for the McMahons because Linda has been appointed to a key position within the Trump cabinet.
After the break, Linda McMahon enters the arena. Joseph, what can you tell me about Vince's ex wife, Linda McMahon and how she ended up in the Trump cabinet?
Linda is interesting. So Linda and Vince matt when they were quite young, they co founded Titan Entertainment, which which is the company behind WWE.
Together.
Their marriage and business partnership was always clearly quite delineated, where it would be like Vince is the big, colorful character and Linda is the shrewd, sensible, quieter business side of proceedings. But there were times when that was muddied.
So there was this multi episode long storyline about very succession, ask about the schisms within the McMahon family, and it culminated in Linda on stage in a wheelchair, acting as though she was heavily medicated while Vince kissed a wrestler that he was meant to be having an affair with.
I can't believe he's croppy, kissy trish like that in front of his own wine.
So, if you're part of the wrestling business, particularly in the nineties and early two thousands, you're gonna get absorbed into a wrestling storyline, and that's exactly what happened to Linda.
My name is Linda McMahon, and I am the chair of the America First Policy Institute.
So Linda has been involved in the Republican Party for some time unsuccessfully until she kind of attached herself to Trump.
I perhaps one of the few people who's been privileged to call Donald Trump a colleague and a boss, but he's also a friend.
She served as part of Trump's twenty sixteen administration. She's also helped in the re election campaign, and she's now his pick for Secretary of Education.
Does she have a background in education.
She has tried to tell people that the answer to that question is yes.
McMahon's only educational experience is one year serving on the Connecticut Board of Education back in two thousand and nine and years on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University.
People who support her will point to the fact that when she was a big figure in the WWE, she would push literacy programs through wrestlers, kind of do public
service education that way. But many people have pointed out that she has been implicated in a recent lawsuit which basically alleges that there was widespread and very well known sexual abuse against ring boys, so young men who were involved in wrestling matches, and there are some very kind of serious allegations that she was part of a culture that facilitated and allowed this abuse.
Long time ringside announcer Melvin Phillips targeted young men from disadvantage backgrounds and hired them as ring boys to help with wrestling matches. Plaintiffs accused Phillips of abusing them while in several states, including here in Maryland.
Also, Vince is no longer part of the WWE. He has had some very serious allegations against him. Vince has been implicated in lawsuits and investigations on the way he allegedly facilitated abuse of all kinds, and some which focus on direct claims on his behavior, including some very serious sex trafficking allegations, all.
Of which makes Lynna McMahon a controversial choice to be in charge of education.
Yeah, there has been a lot of criticism of her, and I think, you know, a lot very justified. Trump has tried to say that she's the owner of this extremely successful business. I mean, WWE is a billion dollar company. So he's tried to use her success in business as as a kind of sign that she knows what's good for America's youth and she can teach them in that way.
So what do you think we missed when we overlook the impact all the influence that pray wrestling has and Donald Trump and the way he operates.
I say this with no glowing secret admiration or anything, but we have to take seriously the things that have made Trump popular. For years, wrestling has been talked about as yeah, oh it's fake, you know. It's talked about as at best fictional child's play on the PA for reality TV, and at worst a corrupting influence on children. And this has come up a lot since Linda has been appointed, and there was a kind of slightly patronizing view of being like, well, Trump just kind of appeals
to these baser instincts. And while that's true, this mode is very good at generating attention and it is a storytelling mode.
It works.
It has made Vince McMahon an extremely powerful person. And the writer I mentioned earlier, Abraham Josephine Raisman, has spoken about us living in a world of Vince McMahon's making and if that's true, that's in some respects very very worrying, and in order to hopefully change it to a different world, we have to take wrestling seriously.
Thanks so much for your time, Joseph.
A pleasure, a true pleasure.
Also in the news today, Green Senator Sarah Hanson Young has said that Murdoch Media executives should explain their disregard for basic journalistic ethics after News Corp Templot's right identical stories mating fossil fuels sponsored by the gas industry. The story is published on Monday, which told Australia to quote step on the gas We'll pay for by Santos, Gemino
and Tambourine and part of a week long series. Senator hansy Young says she'll be calling Murdock media executives before the Senate inquiry into greenwashing, which is due to report in February twenty twenty five. And South Korean President Jansukyal lived at a declaration of martial law after a night of angry protests. The president shocked much of the world by declaring martial law in the country for the first
time in nearly fifty years. Citing national security reasons, but critics say the move was made in regards to his beleague of political position in South Korea, and within hours of the announcement, South Korea's parliament voted down the measure. I'm Daniel James seven am will be back tomorrow