Audio Excerpt - [Crowd cheering]

DANIEL:

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 WWE.

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“First of all Vince, your grapefruits are no match for my trump towers.”

DANIEL:

And Trump is here to battle it out against WWE’s billionaire founder Vince McMahon.

Audio Excerpt - Commentators:

“And look at this! Donald Trump! Donald Trump taking down Vince McMahon! Oh my god! The hostile takeover of Donald Trump on Vince McMahon has happened at WrestleMania 23!”

[Theme Music Starts]

DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James, this is 7am.

The now infamous ‘battle of the billionaires’ is not the only time Trump has appeared in WWE, he’s even got a spot in sport’s the hall of fame.

But this 2007 match against Vince 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 longstanding friendship with McMahon, which he has rewarded by giving his ex-wife Linda McMahon the role of secretary of education in his new cabinet.

Today, contributor to The Saturday Paper Joseph Earp, on how Donald Trump brought the art of pro-wrestling to politics and how it helped make him popular.

It’s Thursday, December 5.

[Theme Music Ends]

DANIEL:

Joseph. Let's talk about the WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment. When did you first watch it and what did you love about it?

JOSEPH:

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.

Audio Excerpt - Steve Austin:

“If you’re ready for Wrestlemania, gimme a hell yeah!”

Audio Excerpt - Crowd:

“HELL YEAH!”

Audio Excerpt - Steve Austin:

“You’re damn right, because Stone Cold Steve Austin has been junked around long enough!”

JOSEPH:

And I remember finding it kind of shocking and strange and just being enthralled.

Audio Excerpt - WWE Announcer:

“It is an awe inspiring sight to see this ring surrounded by these flames, and one of these men ladies and gentlemen will be burned tonight.”

JOSEPH:

And it's one of those things that more recently that I guess I've started 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.

DANIEL:

And at the centre of it all was the owner of WWE Vince McMahon. Can you tell me a little about him and the character that he started to play as you grew up watching?

JOSEPH:

Yeah, Vince McMahon is a really interesting character.

Vince was involved in the world of wrestling since the 60s, 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.

Audio Excerpt - WWE Announcer:

“He’s the owner of the World Wrestling Federation, Vince McMahon!”

Audio Excerpt - [Crowd boos]

JOSEPH:

And because he's a very kind of shrewd businessman and creative force, he realised 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 Mr. 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.

Audio Excerpt - Vince McMahon:

“You all bought it hook line and sinker! You all bought it! Even my family! Even my immediate family bought it! Every damn one of you were made fools of!”

JOSEPH:

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.

Audio Excerpt - Vince McMahon:

“Screw you, you’re fired.”

DANIEL:

Would it be right to say that he sounds a little bit like Donald Trump?

JOSEPH:

I think so. I mean, Trump and Vince are close friends. There's a writer called Abraham Josephine Reisman, 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 has called Vince a great man.

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“Vince is an amazing man, he really is, we kid and we have fun but everybody knows he’s an amazing guy.”

JOSEPH:

There’s stories that when Vince calls, 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 honour that has been bestowed on Donald Trump, who is an official WWE Hall of Fame inductee.

Audio Excerpt - Vince McMahon:

“It's my distinct honour to introduce you to the newest member of the WWE Hall of Fame class of 2013.”

DANIEL:

So Vince seems to have really inspired Trump?

JOSEPH:

I think we can really see that Trump has modelled his persona on Vince McMahon, not only in the cadence of Trump's speech, that kind of rambling, insulting, kind of generating nicknames, going for jokes, going for laugh lines and applause lines.

Audio Excerpt - Megyn Kelly:

“You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“Only Rosie O'Donnell.”

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“Hillary Clinton, commonly referred to as crooked Hillary, thinks that you, all of you are deplorable and totally and totally irredeemable.”

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“Like we need help to beat Sleepy Joe Biden? I don’t think so!”

Audio Excerpt - [Crowd laughing]

JOSEPH:

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 are 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 supercut of Kamala Harris just mentioning Trump over and over, just constantly talking about him.

Audio Excerpt - Donald Trump:

“Last night Kamala made a speech not much of one, with a paid for audience and all she talked about was Donald Trump.”

Audio Excerpt - Kamala Harris:

“Good evening everyone tonight I will speak about Donald Trump… Donald Trump… Donald Trump.”

JOSEPH:

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 their 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.

DANIEL:

After the beak - Linda McMahon enters the arena.

[Advertisement]

DANIEL:

Joseph, What can you tell me about Vince's ex-wife, Linda McMahon? And how she ended up in the Trump cabinet?

JOSEPH:

Linda is interesting. So Linda and Vince met when they were quite young. They co-founded Titan Entertainment, 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, colourful character, and Linda is the shrewd, sensible, quieter business side of proceedings. But there were times where that was muddied. So there was this multi-episode long storyline about, you know, very successionesque. 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.

Audio Excerpt - WWE Announcer:

“I can’t believe he’s groping, kissing Trish like that in front of his own wife!”

JOSEPH:

So if you're part of the wrestling business, particularly in the 90s and early 2000s you're going to get absorbed into a wrestling storyline. And that's exactly what happened to Linda.

Audio Excerpt - Linda McMahon:

“My name is Linda McMahon and I am the chair of the America First Policy Institute.”

JOSEPH:

So Linda has been involved in the Republican Party for some time, unsuccessfully, until she kind of attached herself to Trump.

Audio Excerpt - Linda McMahon:

“I’m perhaps one of the few people who's been privileged to call Donald Trump a colleague, and a boss, but he is also a friend.”

JOSEPH:

She served as part of Trump's 2016 administration. She's also helped in the re-election campaign. And, she's now his pick for secretary of education.

DANIEL:

Does she have a background in education?

JOSEPH:

She has tried to tell people that the answer to that question is yes.

Audio Excerpt - News Reporter:

“McMahon’s only educational experience is one year serving on the Connecticut board of education back in 2009 and years on the board of trustees for Sacred Heart University.”

JOSEPH:

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.

Audio Excerpt - News Host:

“Long time ringside announcer Melvin Philips targeted young men from disadvantaged backgrounds and hired them as ringboys to help with wrestling matches. The five plaintiffs accuse Philips of abusing them while in several states including here in Maryland.”

JOSEPH:

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 behaviour, including some very serious sex trafficking allegations.

DANIEL:

All of which makes Linda McMahon a controversial choice to be in charge of education?

JOSEPH:

Yes, there has been a lot of criticism of her and 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 businesses as a kind of sign that she knows what's good for America's youth and she can teach them in that way.

DANIEL:

So what do you think we miss when we overlook the impact or the influence that pro-wrestling has had on Donald Trump, and the way he operates?

JOSEPH:

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 par 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 patronising 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 Reisman, 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.

DANIEL:

Thanks so much for your time Joseph.

JOSEPH:

A pleasure, a true pleasure.

[Advertisement]

[Theme Music Starts]

DANIEL:

Also in the news today,

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has said that Murdoch media executives should explain their disregard for basic journalistic ethics, after News Corp tabloids ran identical stories promoting fossil fuels, sponsored by the gas industry.

The stories published on Monday, which told Australia to quote “step on the gas”, were paid for by Santos, Jemena, and Tamboran and part of a week-long series.

Senator Hanson-Young says she will be calling Murdoch media executives before the Senate Inquiry into greenwashing which is due to report in February 2025.

And, South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol lifted 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 50 years, citing national security reasons.

But critics say the move was made in regards to his beleaguered political position in South Korea, and within hours of the announcement, South Korea’s parliament voted down the measure.

I’m Daniel James, 7am will be back tomorrow.

[Theme Music Ends]