Comedian Munya Chawawa's documentary Wrestling With Trump (Channel 4, Tuesday, 10pm) offers a fascinating exploration of how Donald Trump's brash, bullying political style is inspired by World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). The film presents a compelling theory: that the American president's approach is cribbed entirely from WWE SmackDown.
The Wrestling Playbook
Chawawa identifies three key elements from wrestling that Trump uses: hyperbole, smack talk, and kayfabe. Hyperbole is Trump's fact-allergic triumphalism, an "I met Michael Jordan and he said I'm better at basketball" type energy. Smack talk is his strategic rudeness, the "crooked Hillary" and "sleepy Joe" nicknames designed to enlist crowd-bullying. Kayfabe refers to the willing suspension of disbelief around wrestling, where fans choose to believe the staged spectacle is real.
Historical Connections
The documentary features footage from WrestleMania 23, where Trump appeared and punched promoter Vince McMahon in the so-called Battle of the Billionaires. It also highlights how many wrestlers, including the Undertaker and Kane, now support Trump, and that Hulk Hogan tore his shirt open at the 2024 Republican National Convention, shouting "Let Trump-a-mania rule again!" Former wrestling executive Linda McMahon is currently the US secretary of education.
Kayfabe and Politics
Chawawa argues that Trump imported a destabilising mass-delusion about truth from the wrestling world. The film explores the early 2000s Attitude era of WWE, characterised by wilful controversy, ugly stereotypes, and misogyny. Chawawa interviews a "villainous Arab" wrestling character from that era, played by an Italian-American now eaten up with guilt for his part in stoking prejudice. Another haunting figure is Dan Richards, who played a character called Progressive Liberal, whose battle cry was "Hillarrryyyy!" His job was to be beaten to pulp every match while crowds hurled vitriol.
Chawawa's Approach
Moving from social media to television, Chawawa pushes back against an aide who believes Trump's incendiary rhetoric played no part in the violence of 6 January. He bravely attends a hostile Trump supporters' night in a bar, a "Magathering" as he quips. He is confused by a woman who describes her hero as a "blue-collar billionaire," and another who claims to have personally investigated the 30,000 lies Trump is estimated to have told in his first term. Spoiler: she discovered those allegations are themselves lies.
Like Louis Theroux before him, Chawawa shows admirable courage. He may well be right that to understand our world, we need to look to "men in teeny tiny hot pants." Perhaps we are all wrestlers now, following cultural and political scripts. The danger comes when we forget that is what we do.
