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    Sad but true – Donald Trump really did wrestle his way into the White House | David Moon

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    Do you remember World Wrestling Entertainment? For many people, the show, in which muscle-bound wrestlers in tight tights throw one another around in staged fights, is a nostalgic throwback to the early 2000s, when it played briefly on Channel 4. Today, its mix of soap opera, theatre and athletic spectacle still draws millions of viewers each week. To some, it’s a guilty pleasure; to others, timeless entertainment. Still, few would associate it with the serious world of politics.For Donald Trump, though, professional wrestling is a lifelong passion. His announcement in November that the former CEO of WWE, Linda McMahon, would take up the role of education secretary in his cabinet of curiosities elicited shock and disbelief. It is impossible to fully understand US politics today without understanding the significance of pro wrestling.Long before McMahon’s nomination, Trump was the first occupant of the Oval Office to be a WWE Hall of Fame inductee, an honour that marked his decades-long business relationship with the company. Trump has hosted two WrestleManias, the WWE’s flagship annual event, appeared more than a dozen times on WWE programmes, played a leading role in two storylines, and gotten physical (albeit to a very limited, awkward degree) around the ring itself. It’s now widely acknowledged that pro wrestling is key to Trump as a political phenomenon. Yet its influence is bigger than Trump. Wrestling has become a key element to understand the reshaping of US politics itself – particularly the Republican right.Just look at the 2024 presidential campaign. Jesse “the Body” Ventura was named by the Robert F Kennedy Jr campaign as a potential vice-presidential running mate. Hulk Hogan tore his shirt off at the Republican national convention, rallied “Trumpaholics” at Madison Square Garden, and hinted at a possible role in a future Trump administration on Fox News. For his part, Donald Trump participated in a Fox News segment with former WWE superstar Tyrus, who dubbed him “the people’s champion” and gave him a replica title belt. He joined the podcasts of pro wrestling icon Mark “the Undertaker” Calloway and current WWE superstar Logan Paul, as well as receiving the endorsement of Calloway and Glenn Jacobs – better known as WWE’s Kane, the Undertaker’s storyline brother – in a TikTok video.One explanation for such behaviour is simply that it’s strategic. A former boxing promoter, Trump has become a fixture at combat sports in general, especially Ultimate Fighting Championship (which merged with WWE to form the media conglomerate TKO in 2023), whose CEO, Dana White, was one of the first people brought on stage at his victory speech. By attaching himself to entertainment forms widely dismissed in polite society, Trump burnishes his anti-establishment vibes while reaching out to a younger, often politically apathetic, male electorate that populates these fandoms. It is pro wrestling, however, that is his natural home. The idea that Trump’s pro wrestling background is used strategically is also linked to his infamous campaign rallies. From the fireworks and thumping entrance music, to the carefully choreographed conflict and spectacle on the stage, the atmosphere of these rallies has often been compared with pro wrestling shows.View image in fullscreenTrump frequently resorts to call-and-response chants and indulges in “smack talk” against the “losers and haters” – assigning them diminishing nicknames such as “lyin’ Ted”, “crooked Hillary” and “sleepy Joe”. Being part of a pro wrestling audience – much like attending a Trump rally – allows spectators to experience emotions that are usually forbidden. They can scream, shout and display rage in a rare public context where it’s socially permitted. Trump rallies are safe spaces where it’s acceptable to emote: to shout and cheer for your country and candidate, while vocalising hatred for political opponents. In 2016, it was possible to think these similarities were coincidental. Today, the influence of pro wrestling is unavoidable. Watch the post-election footage of Donald Trump emerging to the strains of Kid Rock’s American Badass – the Undertaker’s previous entrance music – through the roaring crowd of a recent UFC event and it’s impossible not to make the connection.As the US political sphere becomes one gigantic pro wrestling arena, traditional theories and frameworks are inadequate for making sense of events. We need, therefore, to turn to pro wrestling for answers, particularly the industry-specific concept of “kayfabe”. Initially a label for the illusion that pro wrestling’s predetermined performances were “real”, today, kayfabe describes the peculiar way fans engage with pro wrestling as an acknowledged performance form. In her own insightful writings on pro wrestling and politics, the writer and author Abraham Josephine Riesman proposes “neokayfabe” as a label for Trump-inspired Republican strategies that deliberately blur truth and fiction so that producers and consumers lose the ability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.The idea of politics as kayfabe can be taken further. In my view, the relationship between pro wrestling fans and performances are analogous to how electorates engage with contemporary politics more generally. Trump and his supporters are an extreme case of a wider phenomenon. Enjoying pro wrestling involves a deliberate suspension of disbelief, whereby fans acknowledge the theatricality of the performance while investing in it emotionally. Spectators collaborate with the performers by playing along as “believing fans”, cheering and booing as conventions dictate, embracing the spectacle even while recognising its pretence. In pro wrestling terms this is called “keeping kayfabe”.This mirrors people’s engagement with the artifice surrounding contemporary, professionalised politics. We all know, for example, that politicians’ words are written by speechwriters, based on focus group findings, targeted at specific voter demographics, identified by pollsters and strategists. Yet supporters suspend disbelief, cheer conference speeches and emotionally invest in sentiments they express, all while knowing and accepting and even discussing in detail the calculations behind their construction. In other words, they keep kayfabe. Politics increasingly amounts to this: electorates acting out their role as “believing supporters” while maintaining a knowing cynicism about the whole performance.What makes Trump special is thus not that he personifies “pro wrestlingified” politics, but that his supporters are willing to suspend their disbelief and support his campaign when its fakery is so blatant. If the best our political systems offer their understandably jaded electorates is the option to “suspend disbelief” and “keep kayfabe” with a political campaign they view as essentially simulated, we shouldn’t be shocked many choose the one with an anti-establishment pose and chaotic performance style (each products of a pro wrestling pedigree). It may be a performance, sure, but at least it’s entertaining.

    Dr David Moon is head of division for politics at Bath University More

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      Linda McMahon Was Questioned About WWE in Previous Connecticut Education Role

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      Linda McMahon, whose résumé mainly rests on running World Wrestling Entertainment, has faced questions for years over whether she is suitable for important education posts.Appointees to the State Board of Education usually sail through the confirmation process in Connecticut’s House of Representatives, but a 2009 choice, Linda E. McMahon, drew intense pushback.Andrew Fleischmann, who then chaired the House Education Committee, remembers being offended by her selection and leading the opposition.“She had no involvement whatsoever in education,” Mr. Fleischmann, a Democrat, said in a recent interview. “She’s made tens or hundreds of millions of dollars pushing violence and sexualization of young women. She was a real force for doing ill to kids in our country.”Ms. McMahon’s company, World Wrestling Entertainment, was criticized for promoting violence, steroid use and sexualized content. In the early 2000s, Ms. McMahon would go so far as to engage in the W.W.E.’s theatrics herself. She kicked her husband, Vince McMahon, the company’s co-founder, in the groin in one routine. In another, she appeared to slap her daughter, Stephanie, and knock her to the floor.After a contentious floor debate, the House voted to approve Ms. McMahon by a vote of 96-45, an unusual split for a minor appointment in Connecticut.Ms. McMahon may soon face another confirmation, this time as President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Theatrics, hatred and Linda McMahon: how pro wrestling explains Donald Trump

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      Despite her background in professional wrestling, Linda McMahon is not known for bombast. Indeed, she’s terrible at it: in the many years during which the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO would make occasional appearances in her company’s programming as a version of herself, she was always derided by fans for her lack of charisma and wobbly speaking voice.The most notable thing she did in any of the storylines was pretend to be comatose in a wheelchair while her husband, the vastly more explosive Vince McMahon, sexually harassed one of his female wrestlers in a skit. Linda won’t be winning an Emmy anytime soon.That’s ultimately what makes her a threat: she doesn’t seem like one. She is falsely perceived as a “moderate” and will come across as the “good cop” in a collection of awful ones. When she was nominated as director of the Small Business Administration in 2017, under Donald Trump, she was the only cabinet pick who passed with substantial Democratic support – 81 out of 100 senators voted to confirm her. She made it through her two-plus years in the role without drawing attention (despite the fact that her husband was simultaneously making lucrative business deals with the Saudi government). She will almost certainly be confirmed by the Senate again with relatively little difficulty. They have other things to worry about.View image in fullscreenBut senators should be worried about putting McMahon in charge of education policy. Behind her grandmotherly affect beats a cold heart. As I documented in my biography of her husband, Ringmaster, Linda and Vince have presented a united front at all times even amid accusations of sexual assault. She was almost certainly aware of a massive pedophile ring that ran within the McMahons’ World Wrestling Federation (as it was known) from the 1970s to the early 90s.Just last month, five additional men stepped forward in a lawsuit to accuse Linda and Vince of knowingly allowing their childhood sexual assaults. Naturally, the McMahons deny any wrongdoing. (Vince is also under federal investigation for sex trafficking, a fact that Linda has yet to publicly comment on.)So far, Linda hasn’t mimicked Trump’s wild attacks on his opponents or the institutions of the US government. Her first statement since receiving Trump’s nomination was bland: “All students should be equipped with the necessary skills to prepare them for a successful future.” But I would doubt that her tenure will be moderate.She has never spoken or acted in opposition to any of Trump’s extremist policies in the past, and she has been friends with him since the early 1980s. She ran the biggest pro-Trump Super Pac in 2020 and is currently the co-chair of Trump’s transition team. There is no reason to doubt that this lifelong Republican and dedicated Trumpist operative will enact large swaths of the Project 2025 agenda, which calls for slashing school budgets and censoring educational content on race and gender.There is an illusion at play here. McMahon will be held up as a “reasonable” woman. But given that she works for Trump, her reasonableness is nothing more than “kayfabe”.View image in fullscreenEmerging from carnival sideshows in the 1880s, pro wrestling has always been built on a platform of deception. This deception is known in the industry as “kayfabe” (rhymes with “hey, babe”). For wrestling’s first century of existence, kayfabe was relatively simple, if arduous: wrestlers pretended to be violent madmen and performed staged matches “against” each other – but unlike film actors, they had to stay in character at all times, even on their off-hours. To commit to this code was to “stay in kayfabe”; to violate it was to “break kayfabe”. It was a lie, but it was wide and flat, so you could stand on it easily.However, those days are long gone. In the 1980s, Vince and Linda admitted their product’s fakeness in legal proceedings, so as to avoid taxes, regulations and fines. The secret was out, and nobody could credibly claim wrestling was on the level any more. So kayfabe evolved. What emerged was powerful – and often malevolent.In Ringmaster, I coined a term for this new form of misdirection, which still reigns: “neokayfabe”. Instead of insisting to the audience that what they were seeing was real, McMahon allowed fans to see behind the curtain and learn that not all was as it seemed.Wrestlers were encouraged to bring up real-life disputes with fellow grapplers, or even with McMahon himself, when they appeared in the ring. Previously taboo truths were confessed. Salacious teases of people’s personal lives came to the fore: first, it was just revelations of behind-the-scenes business frustrations; then, it graduated to things like a live interview with a wrestler’s widow about his drug overdose, the day after he died. Eventually, you had spectacles like a closeted gay wrestler being forced to sing Boy George lyrics and then get gay-bashed by another grappler. It’s hard to overstate how shocking – and gripping – these neokayfabe developments were for wrestling fans.When neokayfabe fully took hold in the late 1990s, ratings soared. Fans knew for sure that the matches were staged, but they also knew that thrilling revelations were bursting to the surface. The appeal wasn’t about who “won” or “lost” any more. It was about digging up the truth and deciphering it.You’d see a wrestler throw a particularly vicious personal insult at another one and start to wonder if their hatred was real, even if the match result wasn’t. You’d see Vince wrestle as a sadistic owner called “Mr McMahon” and be astonished that a Fortune 500 CEO was risking life and limb by falling 20ft from the side of a steel cage and landing on a table – was he really hurt after that fall, or was it all part of the show? Conversely, when the wrestler Owen Hart fell 70ft in a zipline accident during a 1999 live show and died after hitting the ring, the McMahons’ show went on, leading many in the crowd to assume it had all been staged. On top of all that, McMahon would toss in obscene sexual references and unconscionable bigotry to mock the marginalized.Much like Trump, McMahon was a master at capturing your attention because you couldn’t quite believe he was able to do what he was doing. Yet there it was. And all the while, Linda was the hidden hand behind him, steering the ship through the choppy waters of industry and emerging with a (somewhat) respectable media empire worth over a billion dollars.In her time running the company, she and Vince cultivated relationships with a wide array of people who now find themselves at the top of the Republican food chain. Most notably, Trump hosted two installments of the annual WrestleMania extravaganza in the late 80s, attended many additional shows and even participated in a long storyline where he pretended to be in an explosive rivalry with Vince, back in 2007. Before that storyline, Trump had rarely, if ever, worked up a rowdy and interactive crowd. But he was a quick study, and we can all see what he learned when he addresses his rally crowds.View image in fullscreenBut Trump wasn’t the only key contact. The McMahons were early corporate partners of the mixed martial arts promotion UFC, getting to know its deeply controversial head, Dana White (and, for what it’s worth, missing an opportunity to buy UFC in its infancy, only to watch as MMA dwarfed wrestling in popularity). It was the McMahons who made the wrestler Hulk Hogan (born Terry Bollea) an international superstar in the mid-80s. By 2024, both White and Hogan, as well as Linda, were primetime speakers at the Republican national convention.The reasoning for that prominent placement was easy to suss out: Trump just flat-out loves wrestling, and has since he was a preteen in Queens, watching local shows organized by Vince’s father. Trump did a late-stage campaign interview with the retired wrestler Mark Calaway (better known as the Undertaker), and was so excited that he essentially turned the tables and started interviewing Calaway with childish questions (eg “What stops somebody from going nuts and starting a real fight?”).If you watched Trump’s face throughout the convention, you saw him practically – and sometimes literally – falling asleep during the speeches. Not so when Hogan got up there. Trump was rapt and grinning while Hogan ripped off his shirt and declared that “Trumpamania” would take the former president all the way back to the White House. Hogan proved more prescient than many highly paid pundits, in that regard.The introduction of pro-wrestling culture into mainstream politics has brought a huge dose of chaos. That chaos is, of course, the point. It’s a shock-and-awe tactic: the enemies of pluralistic democracy are attempting to overwhelm us with statements and actions that confuse and unsettle. The Trump team is doing what it does best, which is keep the world off balance by warping our sense of reality. We no longer trust that anything we see or hear from Trump is strictly “real” – he lies as easily as breathing and routinely gets bored with his plans – but nor do we feel certain that he won’t act on his most ludicrous promises. We are immobilized in a state of constant panic and bewilderment.All of which is to say, Trump and his team have learned the most essential lessons of Trump’s favorite art form. If you don’t understand wrestling, you’ll never understand Trump.And you must know wrestling to understand our likely next secretary of education, as well – even though she doesn’t come across as a typical wrestling personality. She will mask herself in neokayfabe and do what her boss tells her to do. She will seek to tear up American education, from starving public kindergartens of cash to crushing protests at universities. She will be the sharp end of the presidential spear, all while seeming more like a kindly southern aunt than an efficient tool of neo-fascist revolution. She, and all of her ilk, will deceive and misdirect us. We must be vigilant. Don’t believe the hype. More

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      Sid Eudy, Wrestler Known as ‘Sid Vicious’ and ‘Sycho Sid,’ Dies at 63

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      The 6-foot-9 wrestling champion faced off against some of the industry’s biggest names, including Shawn Michaels and Hulk Hogan.Sid Eudy, a professional wrestler known as Sid Justice, Sid Vicious and Sycho Sid, who rose to fame in the 1990s and won multiple championships, died on Monday. He was 63.The cause was cancer, his son Gunnar Eudy wrote on Facebook.Mr. Eudy was one of his generation’s “most imposing and terrifying competitors,” the World Wrestling Entertainment said in a statement. Listed at 6-foot-9 and 317 pounds, he was one of the biggest of what are known in the industry as big men, who often play supporting roles because they don’t perform the high-flying moves that thrill fans.Mr. Eudy was a very big man who became a star in his own right. He headlined Wrestlemania twice and became champion of both the W.W.F., as it was then known, and its 1990s rival, the W.C.W., a rare trifecta.Mr. Eudy first entered the world of wrestling in 1989, when he signed with World Championship Wrestling, then an upstart circuit.Sid Eudy and Hulk Hogan at Madison Square Garden in 1992.Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix, via Getty ImagesIn 1991, Mr. Eudy debuted as Sid Justice in W.W.E., the organization said, as the special guest referee at SummerSlam 1991.Wrestlemania featured Mr. Eudy in its main event twice, in 1992 against Hulk Hogan, and again in 1997, against the Undertaker. Mr. Eudy was both a two-time W.W.F. champion and two-time W.C.W. champion. He was also a two-time U.S.W.A. champion.“One of the most brutal Superstars to ever terrorize W.W.E., the sadistic Sid brought an intensity that few could ever hope to contain,” the organization wrote. “Just ask the litany of ring legends who have incurred his wrath — a hit list that includes Shawn Michaels, Hulk Hogan, Bret ‘Hit Man’ Hart and many more.”Sidney Raymond Eudy was born in West Memphis, Ark., on Dec. 16, 1960. He is survived by his wife, Sabrina Estes Eudy, his sons Frank and Gunnar, as well as his grandchildren.In 2001, during a televised pay-per-view W.C.W. championship match, viewers watched Mr. Eudy injure his leg on live television after he jumped off the rope and accidentally landed badly, snapping his left leg at an unnatural angle.It effectively ended his career in major pro wrestling. Mr. Eudy himself acknowledged as much. “With my injury,” he said in a 2023 interview, “I feel I came up short with solidifying myself as one of the top 10, 15 money-drawers in the business.” More

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      Gabbi Tuft, First Openly Trans Former W.W.E. Star, Returns to Wrestling

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      Ms. Tuft, who retired from the W.W.E. more than a decade ago and came out as transgender in 2021, will return to the ring on Tuesday, she said on social media.Gabbi Tuft, a former World Wrestling Entertainment star and the first current or former member of the organization to come out as transgender, will return to the ring this month, she said on social media on Sunday.Ms. Tuft, who retired more than a decade ago, fought in the W.W.E. under the name Tyler Reks, a dreadlocked gladiator who weighed 250 pounds. She left the organization shortly after the birth of her child, and has since become an online personal fitness and nutrition coach and a TikTok personality with more than a million followers.On Sunday, Ms. Tuft announced that she would be performing for West Coast Pro Wrestling on Tuesday at the Irvine Improv, a venue in Irvine, Calif., which hosts professional wrestling events. The match, she said, would air at a later date on YouTube and other national TV stations.“Mother Arrives,” Ms. Tuft said on social media. “Everything that is unfolding is per the plan,” she added. “Stay faithful. There is more to the plan than what you see or what you think.” Her opponent was not announced.In an interview with The New York Times last year, Ms. Tuft, who came out publicly as transgender in 2021, said she first began dressing as a woman during the pandemic, but was initially in denial, believing it was similar to adopting a persona in the ring and justifying it as another “form of role play.”Months later, she came out to her wife. The following year, she posted a photograph of herself in front of a portrait of her old W.W.E. persona, Tyler Reks, to Instagram.“This is me. Unashamed, unabashedly me. This is the side of me that has hidden in the shadows, afraid and fearful of what the world would think; afraid of what my family, friends, and followers would say or do,” Ms. Tuft wrote in the accompanying caption. “I am no longer afraid and I am no longer fearful.”In Sunday’s social media posts announcing her return to wrestling, Ms. Tuft wrote, “Mother will guide her children to salvation.” More

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      Ole Anderson, Original Member of Four Horsemen Wrestling Team, Dies at 81

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      The professional wrestler fought alongside Arn Anderson, Ric Flair and Tully Blanchard. He later spoke out against the commercialization of the sport.Ole Anderson, a professional wrestler who starred as an original member of the Four Horsemen team in the 1980s and was later critical of the sport’s corporate greed, died on Monday. He was 81.The Carter Funeral Home in Winder, Ga., said that Mr. Anderson had died at his home in Monroe, Ga., and that he had “passed away peacefully.” The funeral home did not share a cause of death.World Wrestling Entertainment, known as the World Wrestling Federation when Mr. Anderson wrestled, said in a statement on Monday that he was known for his “hard-nosed style and gruff demeanor.”Mr. Anderson wrestled professionally from the late 1960s through the 1980s, after training under Verne Gagne, a member of the W.W.E. Hall of Fame.Through the 1970s and early 1980s, he was a member of the tag team known as the Minnesota Wrecking Crew, which over the years included Gene, Lars and Arn Anderson, who called themselves brothers and were popular around the Midwest. They were part of regional circuits like Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and Georgia Championship Wrestling that were united under the National Wrestling Alliance, which regularly crowned them tag-team champions.In the 1980s, Mr. Anderson teamed up with Arn Anderson, Ric Flair and Tully Blanchard to become the Four Horsemen, who went on to dominate the N.W.A. and later World Championship Wrestling, which competed with the W.W.F.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Could ‘Young Rock’ Be Dwayne Johnson’s ‘Apprentice’?

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      A wrestler’s job is to sell an absurd fiction, and make it reality — maybe it’s not so different from politics.Listen to This ArticleThe eighth episode of “Young Rock” finds the show’s protagonist, a 15-year-old Dwayne Johnson, in a classic sitcom predicament. He has pretended to be rich to impress a classmate named Karen, who has the blond hair and movie-grade makeup that teenage boys dream of. Now she is coming over for dinner and expecting to see a palace; in reality, Young Rock is squeezed into a small apartment with his parents, who struggle to pay the rent. The show, which just finished its first season on NBC, follows the actor’s childhood growing up around the professional wrestling business, back when his father, Rocky Johnson, was a star. In a bind, Young Rock turns to his father for the sort of advice only he can provide.“I understand,” Rocky says with paternal knowingness and a roguish smile that implies he has been here before. “You were working a gimmick, and you cornered yourself.” In pro wrestling, working a gimmick is the tapestry of untruths you speak and act into reality — the commitment to character that propels the most gifted fabulists into superstardom. The all-American Hulk Hogan persuaded children to eat their vitamins; the Undertaker somehow made people think he really was an undead mortician; Rocky, who dressed fantastically and went by “Soulman,” was the coolest guy around. (It wasn’t more complicated than that.) It’s why, on the show, he leaves the wrestling arena in a fancy Lincoln Continental, only to check into a run-down motel for the night — he has created a high-rolling persona for the fans, and he must keep it intact. And it’s why he dismisses Young Dwayne’s concerns that maybe he should just come clean with Karen. “Wrong, son,” he says. “What you gotta do is work the gimmick even harder.”Professional wrestling is a form of entertainment that invites viewers to understand its fictive properties but nevertheless still buy into its dramas; in fact, the knowledge that it’s all constructed quickly gives way to a form of meta-appreciation. And unlike actors in a conventional TV drama, wrestlers are their characters, even in real life. This informal contract between performer and audience to never break character means that no matter where Rocky Johnson goes, he’s still recognizable as himself and must behave accordingly.With “Young Rock,” Johnson may very well be trying to find out if this alchemy can be performed for real: if a fiction can be created in front of an audience and then imposed on reality. The framing device for the show, the reason we’re learning about Young Rock’s life, is that Johnson is on the campaign trail for the 2032 presidential race, where he has a real shot to win. Like all coming-of-age stories — and most instantly remaindered political memoirs — “Young Rock” purports to trace how Johnson’s upbringing turned him into the man he is today: wrestling champion, the highest-paid actor on the planet, maybe a future president. Roll your eyes, but accept the possibility. Ever since Donald Trump was elected, plenty of charismatic celebrities have been floated as potential candidates. More than the other contenders — Oprah, Mark Cuban — Johnson has gained real traction, even going so far as to publicly state that he wouldn’t run in 2020 but that it was something he “seriously considered.”Johnson passes every cosmetic test: handsome, tall, voice like a strong handshake. He’s the star of several film franchises that future voters will have grown up watching. And while a different show might play all this for laughs, “Young Rock” frequently lapses into what messaging for Johnson’s actual campaign might sound like. It’s never specified whether he’s running as a Democrat or a Republican; he presents as a third-way politician who just wants America to push past its divisions. Candidate Rock is a little like Michael Bloomberg, but with more convincing platitudes and even better delts. One episode shows Young Rock watching his grandmother’s wrestling company struggle to adjust to contemporary trends, something that leads candidate Rock to sympathize with everyday Americans concerned about their jobs being replaced by automation. Another ties his childhood friendship with Andre the Giant to his selection of a female general (played by Rosario Dawson) as his running mate — because, just like Andre, the general will “always push me to consider other points of view.” (She had previously endorsed his opponent.) Celebrity politicians, like Trump or Arnold Schwarzenegger, can usually skip this self-mythologizing process; the reason they’re running is that people already know who they are. But on “Young Rock,” Johnson runs a fairly conventional campaign; he even engenders a small controversy when he eats a Philly cheesesteak improperly. The insistence that his candidacy would be in any way conventional only heightens the sense that the show is a road map for an actual run.Back in 1987, Young Rock takes his father’s advice to double down on the gimmick in order to impress Karen. It backfires when she sees through the ruse, because for most people charisma can transform reality only so far — and even wrestlers run into this barrier, once their stars fade a little, or their addictions take root, or they simply grow older. Wrestling history is littered with ignoble ends and performers who couldn’t quite accept that the show was over. But there’s one — the only one who has ever lived, actually — who has kept doubling down and seen his star ascend accordingly. For most people, charisma can only transform reality so far — and even wrestlers run into this barrier. Johnson followed his father into professional wrestling, then left the W.W.E. at the apex of his success to get started in Hollywood; he latched himself to the “Fast & Furious” franchise, always playing some version of his stentorian, trash-talking wrestling persona, until he became a movie star in his own right; when his name started coming up as a potential presidential candidate, he indulged the rumors rather than say, “Wait a minute, I’m the guy who says, ‘Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?’” And here he is now, maybe sort-of speaking his fictional presidential campaign into reality, a compelling “will he or won’t he” drama that’s up there with any of his best wrestling or Hollywood stories.“Young Rock” has been modestly successful, averaging more than four million viewers per episode. It’s not Trump’s “The Apprentice,” which was a genuine hit for a decade. But Johnson has many other concurrent efforts to expand his fame across American life: A new “Fast & Furious” movie comes out in June; his relaunch of the much-maligned X.F.L., which he purchased last year, is still in the works; there are rumors that he’ll return to the W.W.E. for a final match. Nobody has ever taken this path to the Oval Office, but you could have said that about Trump, who also understood the importance of committing to character. When your supporters want to believe what you’re saying, there’s no limit to how far the gimmick can go.Source photographs: Mark Taylor/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty Images; David M. Benett/WireImage, via Getty Images; PM Images, via Getty Images. More