Vince McMahon and current U.S. President Donald Trump have a very long history with one another and their relationship can be dissected from many different angles. Trump took to Twitter yesterday to wish Vince McMahon a Happy Birthday as the WWE Chairman turned 74 years old.
Happy Birthday Vince! https://t.co/trOf5Ivmwq
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2019
The New York Post‘s Miranda Devine wrote an article regarding President Trump with a headline stating that Donald pulled a page out of the WWE playbook and relates his recent tactics in the White House to that of a pro wrestling persona. Some quotes from the article are below which also includes some takes from Steve Austin:
When you attend one of his rallies, as I did last week in New Hampshire, it is obvious that Donald Trump has modeled his presidential persona on WWE pro-wrestling.
The banter, the jokes, the trash talking, the catch phrases, the crowd manipulation, the belligerent patriotism, the villain-slamming: It’s all straight out of a preordained WWE storyline.
Trump applies the patriot choke to “heels” like China, The Squad, Pocahontas, Sleepy Joe, Crooked Hillary and radical-left Dems.
From a political point of view Trump’s WWE appropriation makes perfect sense, since the wrestling audience is HUGE — 800 million households worldwide every week, says WWE — and its demographic aligns with those of his voters: 60 percent are male, 60 percent are white, and more than 60 percent are not college graduates.
Even his feud with The Mooch, former communications director Anthony Scaramucci, is a WWE storyline. The Mooch is a babyface- turned-heel who appears at Joe Biden events. Trump tweets that he is a “highly unstable nut job.”
Is Trump a good guy or a bad guy?
“He’s a heel to some. He’s a babyface to others,” says “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, once the greatest wrestler in WWE history, who now hosts a podcast drawing 2 million downloads and a USA show, “Straight Up Steve Austin.”
Trump seems to have modeled himself on Austin, who was an anti-authoritarian, blue-collar, cussing, heel who didn’t care how he was perceived and was so admired by audiences that he “turned face.”
Like Austin, Trump’s persona is champion of the underdog, “The People’s Billionaire,” the “heel” who picks fights and always prevails.
“The crowd know it’s fake but they believe, just like if you went to a movie.”
This is why Trump’s fans let him get away with extravagant untruths that drive his media critics mad.
It was audiences in Trump’s hometown who turned WWE villains into good guys, says Austin, at Madison Square Garden and the Nassau Coliseum.
“They’re a great crowd but they’re tough, especially on babyfaces. Sometimes heels get more cheers,” Austin goes on.
“In today’s age, people tend to be more entertained by the trash-talking of the heels rather than the good guy characteristics of the wholesome babyface [who] always plays by the rules.”
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