Sean Görman works as the villainous "Manager of Champions" in New England Championship Wrestling. A graduate of Emerson College's creative writing program, he's the author of wrestling memoir Until We're Strangers Again and numerous articles and essays about wrestling.
My two forthcoming books are How We Got Here: Melville Plus Nietzsche Divided by the Square Root of (Allan) Bloom Times Žižek (Squared) Equals Bannon (out next week; use coupon "Howwegotherediscount" for a 15% disocunt) and A Christian Existentialist and a Psychoanalytic Atheist Walk into a Trump Rally (out next month; use coupon "trumpiscrazy" for a 15% discount). In three books, the two mentioned above and Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump: An Intervention, I've gestured toward the connection between Trump and wrestling but without much specificity; via a mutual friend, I reached out to Görman, who is extremely knowledgeable on the subject(s).
SEAN GÖRMAN: Trump's obsession with crowd sizes comes directly from pro wrestling. Though a little harder to pull off in the digital age (ticket sales can now be easily tracked by computer,) wrestling promoters have always boasted about having larger crowd sizes than they actually do. Promoters do this, of course, to say to the masses, "Look at how popular and exciting this is. Don't you want to be a part of this?"
In the annals of pro wrestling history, the most classic case of this is the reported crowd size at WrestleMania III at the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan, which was headlined by Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant and is, still to this day, considered to be the greatest single wrestling event of all time and the pinnacle of the '80s wrestling boom. Not long before the main event that night, the WWE's avuncular commentator, "Mean" Gene Okerlund, came to the ring to give a special announcement. Gene got on the microphone and informed the crowd that they were part of history because all of them had established a brand-new indoor attendance record of 93,173. The WWE flashed a chyron across the screen showing the new attendance record as the hordes of fans in the Silverdome went wild... except it wasn't exactly true.
Though the true attendance that day can never be fully verified, whistleblowers (for lack of a better term) within the WWE have since claimed that the real attendance at WrestleMania III was probably closer to 78,000 people. This is why Kamala Harris wisely brought this up at the presidential debate by saying that Trump's rallies were boring and not that big. She baited Trump, and he couldn't resist snapping his jaws at the hook. To both Trump or any wrestling promoter, the accusation that their events aren't as big as they claim to be is worse than saying they have a small penis because what you're really saying is, "Your product is unpopular, and it sucks."
Like I mentioned, padding ticket sales is a little harder to do in the digital age, but tickets to Trump rallies are free, which means Trump can claim whatever attendance records he wants, just like the wrestling promoters of old.
SG: Their decades-long friendship is well known, though the exact nature of that friendship is surprisingly unclear. Trump and McMahon's on-and-off business partnership began somewhere around 1988, when Trump hosted WrestleMania IV at the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
We don't know whether Vince ever sat Trump down in private and said, "Okay, this is how pro wrestling psychology really works..." However, it's pretty much universally agreed upon among those in the wrestling business that conversations like this behind closed doors very likely took place.
DS: I guess Trump wouldn't be the first to mix WWE and politics...
SG: Actually, when it comes to electing professional wrestlers to political office, the Japanese are way ahead of the curve. The Japanese have been electing pro wrestlers to their national congress since the late 80s. In Japan, wrestling is seen as less of a low-brow con and more as a revered brand of sports entertainment. If you watch videos of Japanese wrestling, you'll often see the ringside seats occupied by businessmen wearing suits, respectfully soft-clapping, as if they were watching a serious tennis match at Wimbledon.
But the first time a professional wrestler was elected to a major office in the States was in 1998, when Jesse "The Body" Ventura became the governor of Minnesota. In many interviews, Ventura states that getting into the debates as a third-party candidate was the most important move of his campaign because, he said, "No one can beat a pro wrestler in a debate." Before scripted promos became the norm in the corporatized pro wrestling of today, wrestlers had to be extremely quick on their feet by cutting promos, more or less improv. It was a lot like method acting taken to its zenith. The purpose of a standard pro wrestling promo is to bury your opponent and "get yourself over" to the fans. In this way, politics is tailor-made for pro wrestling and vice versa.
DS: Is there any video available of Trump in attendance at WrestleMania?
SG: Hours and hours. You can find both WrestleMania IV and V on NBC's Peacock network. Trump is ringside for the entirety of both shows, which amounts to probably six to eight hours of wrestling. Even as a kid, I was sort of surprised he stayed for every match. I thought he might just take a ringside seat for the main event, as celebrities do at boxing events, but, no, Donald watched the whole show both years, except for maybe a few undercard matches, when he maybe went to the bathroom or whatever. If you watch the footage now, he seems quite taken by the whole thing.
DS: You've described Trump to me as a "great worker." In WWE terms, what does that mean?
SG: Throughout history, the best pro-wrestling personalities come from wrestlers' real-life personalities, but with the volume turned up to eleven. If the question is whether Trump is the brash carnival barker we see onstage in 2024 or the sagacious businessman we saw on Oprah back in the '80s, I would suggest that he's actually both, and, like any great worker, he simply adjusts the volume on his personality depending on whatever environment he finds himself in.
Calling someone a "great worker" is really just another way of saying "a great manipulator with a strong personality whom people respond to" and, of course, a wrestler who draws money. It also means a wrestler who has solid physical skills in the ring, who can make wrestling look as believable as possible and think on his feet. For example, at the Pennsylvania rally in July, when Trump turned to the cameras and raised his fist after being shot.
DS: In House of Cards, Kevin Spacey, of all people, quotes the line "Everything in the world is about sex except sex; sex is about power"; the great Argentinian aphorist Antonio Porchia says, "Man is weak, and when he makes strength his profession, he is weaker." During a sexual encounter, McMahon allegedly shat on a woman, who was herself already hugely damaged (emotionally). To me, such behavior is hugely about trying to pretend you're dom. The dom person is unbelievably damaged, but instead of exploring that damage, or being submissive, as Biden is, such people triple down on their own woundedness and play it out as dominance.
SG: Like Trump, Vince McMahon's extramarital dalliances over the years have been pretty well known, but I don't think Trump's sexual predilections are as deviant, or depraved, as Vince's. As far as I know, both Trump and Vince are OCD germaphobes. Because of this, I never believed the Russia pee tape thing, especially when no video evidence of it was ever presented. It just seems like the last thing a germaphobe would do.
DS: The Russian pee tape involves Trump paying prostitutes to pee on each other while he watches from afar, but anyway, go on...
SG: I subscribe to the theory that Vince shitting on that girl during a threesome was, quite frankly, an accident. Let's face it: Vince is a 78-year-old man. At his age, accidents like this do happen. Also, many workout supplements contain a ton of magnesium, and occasional diarrhea is pretty common, even among young men. If you read the account of what happened, it sounds to me like Vince had a legit accident and tried to play it off like it was no big deal. I'll put it to you this way: It seems highly unlikely that a notorious germaphobe who does not permit his employees to even sneeze around him (yes, this is a real thing) would be into scatological sex.
As far as Vince's insane need to dominate women goes, yes, that's always been clear. In a Playboy interview from 2001, he intimated that he was molested by his mother (though he later recanted this story). Also, in terms of "work-shoots," Vince performed many vignettes on Monday Night Raw in which he would make secretaries and his female wrestlers bark like a dog.
All that being said, I think the current sex scandal Vince is embroiled in stems from three things: age-related mental issues, age-related mental issues combined with repeated concussions, and age-related mental issues combined with repeated concussions, combined with decades of steroid and testosterone abuse. Add it all up, and you get a serious sexual deviant, which Vince clearly is.
I don't think Trump is quite like that when it comes to women. I honestly think Trump is kind of a nerd who doesn't really know how to talk to women at all. When the "grab her by the pussy" tape came out, I heard an awkward teenager trying to be cool but not knowing how. I think that Trump definitely came from that Patrick Bateman era of New York City, where hiring high-end escorts who kept their mouths shut was a common practice, but any kind of piss fetish or actual rape? Naw. He's too smart to all-out rape a woman, especially when he doesn't have to. And if he really had the urge, he could probably just hire a woman to live out that fantasy. No need to risk it all, which Vince clearly did in the insane senility of his old age.
DS: You used the term "work-shoot" re: Vince's performances on Monday Night Raw." Explain to me what this term means. The way I understand it, a "work" is the working up of an idea, e.g., taking a real argument and working it up into a big deal. The "shoot" is the actual argument staged in front of people. Give me some examples of the work-shoot vis-à-vis Trump. For example, Trump takes some tiny thing, like someone's AI joke about Kamala's crowd, which he then turns into a shoot.
SG: A "work" is a manipulated fake thing, and a "shoot" is the real thing. These are old carny terms from a hundred years ago, when pro wrestling first got its start. So, a "worked-shoot" is a combination of the two. I'll explain how the work-shoot played out with Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels.
Back in the mid-'90s, the two biggest stars in the WWE were Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels, and the two men legitimately did not like each other. Both were amazing workers and very skilled technicians in the ring. Bret was the babyface and Michaels was the heel; and it was only a matter of time before the two men did a program (i.e. a storyline) together. Bret came from a legendary wrestling family and was very strait-laced. A "Canadian hero," as he called himself. Shawn Michaels was the brash, haughty, younger guy who was disrespectful backstage, etc. Again, these were their actual personalities in real life. To a large degree, they really were their characters.
Things really came to a head when, during a TV promo, Shawn insinuated that Hart was cheating on his wife with a valet named Sunny, which may have been true, especially given Sunny's reputation when it came to hooking up with the boys (wrestling is a very incestuous place). When the tension backstage between Hart and Michaels began to ramp up, the WWE decided to run with an in-ring angle to capitalize on the legitimate antagonism between the two men. The result was a great wrestling feud and some classic matches, but it also ended with the two guys getting into an actual locker room brawl (surprisingly rare in wrestling); Bret Hart tore out a huge chunk of Shawn Michaels' hair. That was a worked-shoot. The whole angle was believable to fans because, well, it was kind of real.
How do worked-shoots relate to Trump? Well, the first and most obvious example to me is the assassination attempt. I mean, Trump did legitimately get shot in the ear. That really happened. That was a shoot (no pun intended). However, once the real thing happened, Trump (like any great worker) thought on his feet, turned to the hardcam (more on that in a moment), and raised his fist in defiance. In a split second, Trump said, "How can I use this moment to get myself over?" (i.e., make myself look awesome to my fans). So, that was Trump "working" and taking advantage of a real event, hence a "worked-shoot."
DS: Whom from WWE does Trump most resemble?
SG: I've asked all my buddies in wrestling this question, and all of them, across the board, say "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.
DS: How so? He's not a heel? He's sort of a switch?
SG: It may seem crazy, given the fact that Steve Austin is an ass-kicking, beer-drinking redneck from Texas and a hero of the working class, and Trump is, well, Trump, however, if you understand wrestling, or are actually in the wrestling business, then you understand it perfectly. It's not necessarily about the surface-level traits of these two characters but rather what they represent and who they are to both their respective audiences and archrivals.
The most successful pro wrestling storyline of all time is arguably Steve Austin vs. Vince McMahon. Again, we're back to the blurring of reality and fantasy here, because (like I said) Steve Austin really is that ass-kicking redneck from Texas, and Vince McMahon really is a greedy, billionaire piece-of-shit who wielded immense power. On the surface, it may seem like Vince is Trump in this scenario, but in practice, it's actually the other way around.
Of course, Trump was a rich kid from New York who grew up with a silver spoon in his mouth. But much like Teddy Roosevelt, he was the rich New Yorker who was able to connect with the working class and whom the working class adored. To the working class, Trump is a brash, no-nonsense tough guy who takes shit from no one: just like Steve Austin. This was Austin's entire persona -- the living embodiment of "Take this job and shove it."
Meanwhile, Vince corresponds to the wealthy, corporate elites in Washington. Vince is the Deep State or the bureaucratic state. Vince is the one who shipped working-class jobs overseas and will use any means necessary, such as lawfare, to hold his opponent back and keep him down. As a matter of fact, several times on Monday Night Raw, Vince had Austin arrested to knock him out of competition. Sound familiar? As the lyrics in Vince's evil entrance music go, "You're up against a machine too strong...greedy politicians buying souls from us are puppets... who find their place in line... tie a string around your finger, boy, because it's just a matter of time... because you've got... NO CHANCE IN HELL."
So, in that way, "Stone Cold" vs. Mr. McMahon is Donald Trump vs. Washington, DC. Sure, Donald Trump may not be "the little guy," just like "Stone Cold" wasn't necessarily the little guy, but the two of them are fighting for the little guy against powerful people and overwhelming odds. You can almost hear Hillary Clinton saying, "Donald Trump, you're up against a machine too strong, and you've got NO CHANCE IN HELL."
Every now and again, a wrestler who starts off as a heel gradually becomes a babyface, even though their character doesn't change. Steve Austin in the '90s and Roddy Piper in the '80s are prime examples. Originally, Austin and Piper were both put in storylines as the heel, but they were so tough, dogged, and charismatic that fans eventually started cheering for them. So, based on the organic crowd reactions, the bookers (writers) eventually just went with the flow and started booking them in storylines as babyfaces. Austin and Piper were classic antiheroes -- the Western gunslingers who played by their own rules and came into town as dirty outlaws but eventually started fighting the corrupt sheriff, which endeared them to the people. In the eyes of many, this is Trump.
DS: Trump is a mix of babyface and heel? And he pivots from moment to moment? How does this work? Vince McMahon pretends to be in opposition to, say, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, but they are a hundred percent in cahoots, of course. The kayfabe aspect seems crucial.
SG: Kayfabe was like the Mafia's omertà. Since pro wrestling's inception in the early 1900s, it was a code of silence that protected the business. The word was coined in the carnivals where pro wrestling began, and its origin was Pig Latin for the word "fake" (ake-fay), or "be fake."
Trump is kayfabing for the cameras, but many Washington politicians aren't really in on it. They don't get it. They think it's all a shoot. Politics isn't quite wrestling, so it's not quite fiction, but in the eyes of Trump, politics is a kayfabed work when the cameras are rolling, whereas it's a shoot in the Oval Office behind closed doors. This, I suppose, is similar to what goes on in the wrestling ring vs. what goes on in the locker room. However, most D.C. politicians aren't working with Trump in the locker room because they don't see the difference between the work and the shoot. From everything I've heard, there's a stark difference between Trump on camera and Trump off camera. In a 2011 documentary about WrestleMania, Vince said of Trump, "When you really get to know Donald, and I don't want to, like, burst anyone's bubble here, but he's a really, really humble, really, really nice man... Of course, I wondered whose ego was bigger, Trump's or mine? Mine is." So, when Trump is on camera, he's Trump with the volume up to 11, but when he's off camera, he's just Trump with the volume on 1. Most pro wrestlers are like this.
I guess the best example of this is the feud Trump had with Megyn Kelly back in 2016. During the GOP debate, Kelly tried to hit Trump with a gotcha question when she grilled him about sexist comments he'd made in the past. "You've called women you don't like 'fat pigs,' 'dogs,' 'slobs,' and 'di*SG:*usting animals,'" to which Trump, now famously, quipped, "Only Rosie O'Donnell." Again, this is an example of Trump being a great worker because he was able to think on his feet and completely turn that punch around to his advantage. Kelly was going for a T.K.O. but wound up getting knocked out herself.
In years since, Megyn Kelly has done a complete 180 with Trump and has basically said, "Oh, I get it now." The point is, Trump might be kayfabing in Washington and with the mainstream media, but Washington and the mainstream media are not kayfabing with him. Unlike wrestling, they are not in cahoots backstage. And as far as the audience goes, I think a lot of people on the Right understand the difference between Trump in the ring and Trump in the locker room, whereas many on the Left see them as one and the same.
DS: Okay, so maybe he's a "tweener," not a switch.
SG: Honestly, I kind of hate the term "tweener," because it's a term used by Internet wrestling fans who think they know something about the business but really don't. In the locker room, you'll get the stink eye if you use that term, because wrestling functions as a lucrative business only when there's a clear distinction between the babyface and the heel, when the audience is a hundred percent behind one guy and a hundred percent against the other. However, when a wrestler is in that gray area between turning from babyface to heel (or vice versa), there's really no other way to describe it. There's always a brief window of time between half the crowd loving the guy and half the crowd hating the guy before the crowd finally chooses which way to go.
That being said, Trump remains in a constant state of tweener simply because the country is now so polarized. This is why I use the analogy of Bret Hart being a heel in the U.S. and a babyface in Canada. This sort of regional split is extremely rare in wrestling, but sadly, it is now the chess board we're all living on here in the States. Go to California, and Trump is a heel. Go to West Virginia, and Trump is a babyface. Go to Ohio, and Trump is a tweener. Take the U.S. as a whole, and Trump is a tweener.
Yet Trump remains the same wherever he goes. Like Austin and Piper, he didn't change for the people -- the people changed for him. I am put to mind of the Iowa State Fair, where presidential candidates always go for photo ops to win support. In the past, you would see people like Bernie Sanders or Mitt Romney donning flannel shirts and cowboy hats to "connect with the common folk," but Trump never did that. Instead, he showed up at the fair in the same suit with the same long red necktie and the same Queens accent. In the eyes of the people, there was an authenticity to him that they'd never seen before in a politician. "You can love me or hate me, but unlike these other fake assholes, I am who I am." This is exactly what Roddy Piper did in the '80s and what "Stone Cold" did in the '90s.
DS: Tell me more about Roddy Piper.
SG: In the early 1980s, Roddy Piper was unquestionably the most hated heel in wrestling, if not the country. He sucker-punched Mr. T live on MTV and kicked Cyndi Lauper in the head. Piper also remained in a constant state of kayfabe no matter where he was or what he was doing. He never broke character, even in the parking lots at the arenas where he was once stabbed by a crazed fan.
Yet by 1987, the people started cheering for Piper. This happened gradually and was likely due to the fact that he had a contractual dispute with Vince that resulted in Piper leaving the company for about a year. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, even if the people didn't like you to begin with. Fans missed hating Piper, and when he returned, that longing for hatred eventually turned into love. As the saying goes in wrestling, "He might be an asshole, but he's our asshole." Is this what has happened with Trump after four years of Biden?
DS: Recently, I was a guest on a podcast, and I took a stab at unpacking the assassination attempt on Trump and the political theater of the moment, especially Trump's use of "pierced" to describe the flesh wound; "pierced" is used in the King James Bible to describe Jesus's crucifixion. Any thoughts on that incident through a WWE lens?
SG: In pro wrestling, hyperbole and exaggeration are everything. Not sure if you're aware, but when a wrestler bleeds in the ring, it's actual blood caused by the wrestler slicing his own forehead with a concealed razor blade. This practice is called "gigging" or "getting color." Fake blood can't be used in wrestling because it would get washed away by sweat in seconds, and it only takes a small cut on the forehead to produce a dramatic effect. "His face is a crimson mask!"
If a wrestler, say, takes an errant punch that actually lands full-force and he bleeds for real, it's called "getting color the hard way." When this happens, the wrestler will often make the most of it by overselling it dramatically, even if it's just a bloody nose. This is exactly what Trump did after his ear got clipped by that bullet. I don't mean to downplay the severity of getting shot. Trump really did get hit with a bullet, but when he described the assassination attempt at the RNC, you'd think half his head got blown off like JFK.
DS: So, in press conferences, he's a heel -- fuck you all -- but at rallies he's a babyface?
SG: Back in 2018, Trump held a press conference in the Rose Garden, where he called on an ABC reporter named Cecilia Vega. Trump said, "She's shocked that I picked her. Like in a state of shock." Vega responded, "I'm not, thank you, Mr. President." "That's okay," Trump said, "I know you're not thinking. You never do."
Another time, Trump's chief journalistic nemesis, Jim Acosta of CNN, told Trump that he did a news report at the border and that there didn't seem to be any issue down there. Trump had seen the report Acosta was referring to, and Trump said, "That's because you were standing in front of a wall. Some people are really dumb." All of this is Trump in full heel mode. He's being a dick, and he knows it. It's just like when heels used to rag on "Mean" Gene Okerlund during interviews back in the day.
By contrast, Trump goes into full babyface mode at his rallies, mostly through his use of catchphrases the audience parrots back to him. In wrestling, only babyfaces use catchphrases because it connects the audience to the wrestler, as if to say, "I am you, and you are me." Trump typically ends his rallies by saying, in a syncopated manner, "And we will make ... America ... great ... again." This is no different than Steve Austin ending all his promos by saying, "And that's the bottom line...because 'Stone Cold' said so!"
DS: The way Trump played the assassination attempt was crucial, his awareness of the camera. It seemed to end the election, until Biden quit. Earlier in our conversation, you mentioned the role of the "hardcam." How is that different from a camera? Is it a camera that is locked in place?
SG: My apologies. After twenty-five years in the wrestling business, I sometimes use insider carny wrestling terms casually, as if everyone knows what I'm talking about. In wrestling, the hardcam is the stationary camera out in the stands aimed directly at the ring, and it's the main camera that you play to when you're in the ring. In other words, if you picture a wrestling match in your mind, you're likely envisioning the view from the hardcam.
One night in Quincy, Massachusetts, I did a spot where a wrestler threw me off the top of a fifteen-foot-high steel cage and onto the hardwood floor of the arena down below. A group of wrestlers and large security guards were supposed to form a sort of human pillow underneath me to catch me, like I was a high-flying cheerleader coming down from a toss, which they did.... What they didn't do was protect the back of my head from the steel barricade around the ring that separates the ring from the fans. I cracked the back of my skull on the barricade and got knocked unconscious for maybe five to ten seconds. When I finally came to and managed to piece together where I was and what was going on, my first instinct was to "sell to the hardcam" (pretend I was more hurt than I was and face the hardcam as I was doing it).
When Trump got shot and popped up from the ground, he told the Secret Service to wait so he could turn to the hardcam and raise his fist in defiance. Immediately afterward, a bunch of my wrestling buddies texted me, saying, "That dude definitely learned a lot from Vince [McMahon] and wrestling because in the heat of the moment, he kept his cool and played to the hardcam." Pro wrestling is a genre of live entertainment where mishaps are common, so when things go wrong, it's important to be quick on your feet and capitalize on the moment, and Trump did just that. Whether you like him or not, that image of him raising his fist with the flag in the background is now undoubtedly iconic -- all because he played to the hardcam.
DS: Talk to me about Trump's entrance at the 2024 RNC. How WWE was it?
SG: A wrestler called The Undertaker had the most memorable and iconic entrance of all time. The house lights would abruptly cut off, followed by a single bell toll in the darkness, then a pipe organ rendition of Chopin's Funeral March. It was amazing theater, and it was hard not to get chills in the arena when The Undertaker walked slowly to the ring. Trump blatantly ripped this off at the RNC.
Hogan's speech at the RNC was pitch-perfect. He started calmly, saying he's always tried to stay out of politics, but then he ramped up and started yelling that when they tried to kill Trump, he decided, "Enough is enough!" At that point, he tore off his signature Hulkamania shirt, revealing a Trump/Vance t-shirt underneath. The crowd went berserk. He then toned it down again, went into shoot mode, said his real name is Terry Bollea, and he's a dad and a husband, and how shit has gotten really out of control, and how Trump will "straighten this country out, brother!" He ended the speech with his own famous catchphrase, but with a twist: "Whatcha gonna do when Trumpamania runs wild on you!"
Now, of course, the mainstream media shat all over this, but mainstream media have always turned their nose up at pro wrestling, ever since pro wrestling's inception in the early 1900s. However, I saw a lot of Gen-Xers on Twitter saying, "Most people don't understand how important Hogan's speech was for an entire generation of kids who grew up in the '80s." I personally was never a Hulkamaniac, but millions of kids were. Back in the Reagan '80s, Hulk Hogan was a bona fide American hero who defeated the evil Soviet Russian, Nikolai Volkoff, and the devious Iranian, The Iron Sheik. Hogan's motto was, "Be true to yourself, be true to your country, and train, say your prayers, and eat your vitamins. Be a real American."
It all seems pretty cheesy now, but it really meant something at the time. I showed Hogan's 2024 RNC speech to my mom, a diehard Boomer Democrat who despises Trump, and she said, "Wow, from a marketing standpoint, that was incredible." She thought for a moment and then added, "You know, I have to say, this is kind of what's missing from the culture right now. When you were growing up, Sean, you had very positive role models. You had Hulk Hogan, you had Mr. T, and you had G.I. Joe. You had heroes you could look up to, and, yeah, I think kids today are really missing that."