The world of pro wrestling used to be sold as real. Viewers were told that the fights, the rivalries, and the storylines were all real-life, otherwise known as a phenomenon called kayfabe. Then, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon turned that on its head.
According to the author Abraham Josephine Riesman, who recently wrote a biography on McMahon, the wrestling ringleader pivoted to and then codified an entertainment strategy that Riesman calls neo-kayfabe, where it’s made known that everything is actually fake, but, viewers are teased with “assumptions” that there may be some truth.
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“You start with the assumption, ‘Hey, everything’s fake here. But guess what? The two guys who are having the match tonight, they actually hate each other,” explains Riesman, who came on this episode of The New Abnormal politics podcast to talk about that book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America.
Not only did this tactic work for WWE, but the technique to coerce people to come back for more has seeped into the world of politics, and Donald Trump’s.
This is because, as Riesman reports, McMahon and Trump are friends, and it seems that Trump learned a thing or two from his longtime pal.
“Wrestling was doing it before politics, but now we have this political neo-kayfabe where you have people in the Trump vein who get up and say this wild mix of unspeakable truth and total falsity and a lot of stuff in between. And you say it all with an equal level of commitment. And that baffles people. And when people are baffled, they don’t tune you out,” Riesman tells podcast co-host Andy Levy. “In fact, they tune in as long as it’s scandalous and thrilling, they will tune in to figure out what’s real and what isn’t.”
Also in this episode: Riesman goes deeper into how McMahon’s strategy was able to leak into the world of politics, the history of McMahon and Trump’s friendship, and if there’s truth behind one of the biggest quotes from her book: “Vince McMahon is the closest thing to a friend Trump has.”
Plus! Andy and Danielle Moodie talk about the Republican war on oat and almond milk and make the case that if TikTok goes down, Meta and Twitter should go with it.
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
