PART 1: IS TRUMP FOR REAL? Or is this more management of reality?

An MOR series

Donald Trump won. What does it mean? Do I like it? What do I think? What will happen in the Middle East? People wanna know.

Like, five people. But still…

Believe me, I understand the MAGA excitement. The giddiness. And I share in some of that. Because the Trump win, if nothing else, is a withering cultural blow to all things woke. Just take a look at how the defeated candidate feels about that ideology:

I salute Trump supporters for putting woke on the defensive. Because woke really needs to go. Woke promotes faux-compassionate policies based on Orwellian denials of reality that poison the minds of parents so they’ll mutilate their kids and destroy their chances of reproduction. Woke censors free expression and persecutes any dissenters—and even allies (!), if they are white—with mob-violence and cancellation. And woke divides and rules by promoting the racist snake oil of identity-politics and the utter poison of antisemitism, daring to call that—once again in orthodox Orwellian fashion—anti-racism! Yes, woke pretends to be morally superior, but woke is evil, and anybody securely anchored in the Judeo-Christian ethic of autonomy, the superior product, can right away see it.

So, yes, a well-landed blow against woke in the United States—notwithstanding that the job is hardly finished—is definitely something to celebrate.

It is true, also, that some of Trump’s picks, by comparison to Joe Biden’s team, certainly seem—at least—encouraging. I’ll grant that too.

And some of his early moves, like announcing that he’ll withdraw from the World Health Organization (assuming that he means it), are impeccable.

Moreover, I consider what took place an honest result: I don’t doubt the sincerity of the American voters.

But …(yup)… I have a question:

• Did the bad bosses really lose?

What I mean is this: Did the bosses—the bad ones, the ones Donald (‘Drain the Swamp’) Trump is supposed to rid us of—really lose the institutions, here? That’s another question entirely. And it may be translated into this other question:

• Is Trump himself, at root, a good or a bad guy?

Now, it is logically possible, of course, that the bad bosses might retain control of the institutions even in the case of a good Trump. But this is already how Trump’s first term is currently explained on the right: he meant well, but he was green—he came from business, he didn’t know politics, he didn’t know policy—so the Deep State (for example, Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci) pretty much did what they wanted with him. In consequence, lots of things that should have changed, didn’t, and Trump’s government did some awful things when it allowed corrupt Deep-State career bureaucrats to make policy. For supporters of this hypothesis—one that Trump himself has endorsed—the strongest argument for Trump is that, after one term in office, one term out of office, and a second presidential campaign (featuring two assassination attempts), he has now learned the ropes.

If you accept that narrative, it has one clear logical consequence:

• This time around, if Trump does not protect democracy, it’s definitely on him—can’t blame the Deep State twice.

So Trump is about to reveal himself. Is he a good guy or a bad guy?

Many people on the right believe Trump is a good guy, defined here for technical purposes as someone who honestly wishes to defend our basic democratic rights and liberties (without necessarily implying any virtues beyond that). That is certainly an admissible hypothesis, and it should absolutely be considered.

I insist: the ‘Trump is a good guy’ hypothesis deserves a seat at the scientific table. I would never dream of censoring it with prejudice. Because it certainly could be the case that Trump is a good guy. Moreover, this is ethically correct: every human deserves the benefit of the doubt and ought to be judged on merits. As Jesus of Nazareth taught,“By their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:20).

However …(yup)…, the positive impression that Trump is now making, though perhaps convincing, must not influence our analysis overmuch, because con men—if they are any good—will be convincing. Moreover, our declared vocation at The Management of Reality is to give Western democratic citizens the tools to spot if and when and where and why and how they are being conned by the bosses. We thus find ourselves obligated, by our very mission, to consider also the alternative hypothesis: that Trump might be a bad guy.

I’ll lay it out here.

The Machiavellian hypothesis

The Machiavellian hypothesis says that, when Trump claims to care a lot about free speech, he is only pretending; that when he claims to support Israel, he is merely striking a pose; that when he claims to oppose jihadism, that’s another pose. Etc. In short, the alternative—Machiavellian—hypothesis proposes that the populist and vaguely (and inconsistently) Libertarian-ish politician we see on our various screens is merely the character ‘Donald Trump,’ performed to perfection for the now-perfectly-ubiquitous cameras (so he is always ‘on’).

And why would Trump be doing that?

According to this hypothesis, because he’s been secretly bought, recruited, threatened, corrupted, groomed, blackmailed, gaslighted, indoctrinated… (whatever, who cares) to do a job: to become the leader of the opposition so that the same bad bosses, the ones he pretend-promised to rid us of, can—without seeming to—continue to run the Grand Show from the shadows.

But is this—admittedly extreme—hypothesis even worth considering?

Well of course it’s worth considering. The only way to do intelligent analysis of anything is to consider all the relevant hypotheses. Any claim to the contrary is the beginning of censorship, and censorship is what Trump supporters are fighting against. On the new political right—which is a classically liberal and centrist right—we are all free-speech purists now, right? Well, then let a new age begin. In this new age, Trump must be skeptically examined from the new right. We’ll watch him like a hawk, lest he disappoint, and we’ll hold his feet to the fire, so that he won’t.

That’s how you defend democracy. Not by cheering your guy no matter what. That’s idolatry. And Trumpish idolatry is even more worrisome than TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome: pathological hatred of all things Trump).

Moreover, we were warned way back in the 19th c. by the great political theorist Maurice Joly that this sort of thing—clandestine corruption of our institutions by power elites who collude to create a Grand Show of democracy—certainly could happen. He also explained why and how this would happen.

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Maurice Joly and the Theory of Counterfeit Democracy

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And there is one datum—or more precisely a massive encyclopedic collection of them, all grouped into the same category of evidence—that really should invite a rational mind to put on the table, if only for the sake of scientific sport, the Grand-Show Machiavellian hypothesis that I have just spelled out. It is this:

The paradoxical behavior of Democratic Party bosses

One could almost swear—almost (right?)—that the bosses running the Democratic Party wanted to lose this election to Donald Trump.

After all, they could have won it.

The country is almost evenly divided down the middle. Just look at the final tally in the national popular vote: 77,234,710 votes (49.91%) for Trump and 74,938,722 votes (48.43%) for Kamala Harris.

You need only half the votes in that difference to flip the election, so Trump’s margin in the popular vote was literally under 1%. That’s… rather close. So where’s the big ‘mandate’ that Trump supporters keep boasting about? I’ll tell you a little secret: it doesn’t exist.

That doesn’t mean I wanted Kamala Harris—back off. I am just pointing out facts. I am merely saying that the supposed crushing defeat suffered by the Democrats, about which the mass media and social media are full to bursting, is a lot of nonsense. There was no landslide, no crushing defeat. There is no great mandate. (Sorry.)

The alleged Trump landslide is an artifact of some much-discussed features of the US’s imperfectly democratic system (I am speaking kindly, here). You think you see a landslide because of the effects of politically motivated redistricting or ‘Gerrymandering,’ and the—speaking less kindly, now—astonishingly archaic and idiotic electoral college system and ‘first past the post’ rule, all of which conspire to make it possible for one party, despite having a very small numerical advantage, to gain overwhelming control of the institutions (as just happened). In the national popular vote, however, where none of that structural absurdity can obscure the true sympathies of US citizens, Trump won by a hair—a hair, people (let us be frank).

The Democrats—it follows—could have won.

If the Democrats had fielded a good candidate, one presenting a welcome contrast to everything that makes so many people nervous about Donald Trump, with reasonable policy proposals, usefully explained, the Democrats certainly could have won.

So let us state plainly what happened here: the Democrats fielded a candidate whose total inadequacy was so utterly—so profoundly—embarrassing as to repeatedly compel the—now widely used—adolescent term cringe, far stronger than cringy and yet… not nearly strong enough. For that shuddering discomfort is enough to make us feel… unclean. This catastrophic judgment applies to the Democrat’s first presidential candidate, and to the second, and to the running mate. I mean: wow. And despite all that the Democrats still got almost half the country! So, obviously, they could have won. They lost only because they did absolutely everything completely wrong.

That’s a lot of coincidences. And witnessing lots of ‘coincidences’ is precisely what makes a rational mind suspicious.

How suspicious?

Looks like a fixed fight

I get a cold chill crawling up from my vestigial simian tail to the back of my neck, where the hairs are standing up, like I might at a boxing match after watching a fighter with a good chance of winning get knocked out in the third round. I’d ask myself (not without pointed indignation): Did that guy throw the fight!? And I’d be right to ask because there is a history: we certainly do know of cases where a boxing match—thanks to thorough corruption of the sport by criminals—resulted in a fixed fight.

Let’s get into it, because I find in this a useful metaphor.

Take Jake LaMotta, the Raging Bull of Martin Scorcese’s film, who, in agreement with the Mafia, threw his famous fight with Billy Fox (1947). That Billy Fox, as hilarious irony would have it, could be pushed over with a feather, so poor LaMotta—as he discovered almost as soon as he entered the ring—couldn’t credibly lose to him. Yet LaMotta—with a conviction born perhaps of many blows professionally received to the head—stubbornly decided to stick with the plan. And that did it.

Jake LaMotta vs. Billy Fox (Image credit: About the Mafia.)

The FBI was running cover for the Mafia and would have preferred to steer clear of all this.

“FBI director [J. Edgar Hoover] repeatedly dismissed the notion that a network of criminals like the Mafia might be operating on a national scale. (…) ‘For three decades, whenever possible, Hoover ignored the Mafia,’ writes Selwyn Raab in Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires.”¹

But LaMotta’s maniacal, deranged commitment to his fraudulent defeat virtually forced the FBI to investigate the fight. Because everybody could see that Raging Bull was losing to a blind zombie. And nobody was buying it. In LaMotta’s own words:

“The first round, [after] a couple of belts to [Billy Fox’s] head, and I see a glassy look coming over his eyes. Jesus Christ, a couple of jabs and he’s going to fall down? I began to panic a little. I was supposed to be throwing a fight to this guy, and it looked like I was going to end up holding him on his feet... By [the fourth round], if there was anybody in [Madison Square] Garden who didn’t know what was happening, he must have been dead drunk.”²

In other words, this fight looked more like what fans of pro wrestling are accustomed to see: acting. Except that in pro wrestling both sides are always acting.

Okay, back off wrestling fans!

Yes, I rush to concede: there’s lots of real violence in pro wrestling—no question. But pro wrestling is acting and everybody knows it. The acting is obvious because it is so bad. Nobody minds—to the contrary. Everybody who loves pro wrestling loves it just like that. The bad acting is a feature, not a bug, because pro wrestling is what they call camp.

In case you are not the artsy or ‘intellectual’ type, I give you chatGPT’s succinct summary of the grammar of camp (boldface is mine):

“In the context of artistic expression, ‘camp’ refers to a style or aesthetic characterized by deliberate exaggeration, theatricality, and irony, often embracing elements of bad taste or ostentation to subvert traditional notions of seriousness and beauty. It celebrates the artificial and the extravagant, valuing style over substance and often functioning as a form of social or cultural critique. Camp can be playful, self-aware, and provocative, thriving on its ability to blur the boundaries between high art and popular culture, sincerity and parody. One example is queer culture, where camp has served as a tool for challenging norms and embracing alternative identities.”

Though pro-wrestling fans may squirm to find themselves grouped together with “queer culture,” this is a fact: pro wrestling is camp. And Donald Trump—or perhaps I should say ‘Donald Trump’—came from pro-wrestling.

Kayfabe: Donald Trump’s pro-wrestling background

Trump put his own money down to sponsor WrestleMania IV and WrestleMania V in exchange for the cooperation of the WWF (World Wrestling Federation, now World Wrestling Entertainment - WWE) with the pretense that Trump’s Atlantic-City properties were hosting these events (they were actually held at Atlantic City Convention Hall, across the street). That was way back in the late 1980s. So, long before Trump’s reality-TV show The Apprentice, Trump was already apprenticing himself to pro-wrestling’s greatest-ever impresario, Vince McMahon, now the subject of an extensive—and instructive—Netflix TV documentary.

“A lot of people have confused over the years who my character was on television and who I am. … Sometimes the lines of reality, or fact and fiction, are very blurred in our business. Sometimes what happens is performers start believing in themselves. They start believing in their own character. The individual… loses all sense of who they really are, personally. They become the character. I’m wondering myself now. Which is the character, and which is me? I guess maybe it’s a blend. And I would suggest that maybe one is exaggerated a little bit, uh, but I’m not sure which one.”³
—Vince McMahon

Along with legendary comedian Andy Kaufman (not coincidentally another fan of wrestling!), McMahon is the true pioneer of reality-TV and the culture shift that followed. ’Twas an unfortunate shift, in my view, because defending democracy becomes increasingly difficult when people stop caring about the boundary separating fakery from reality. When that happens, all the world becomes a carnival (and it is from carnival, not coincidentally, that pro wrestling evolved).⁴

Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman (left); the original Andy Kaufman (right).

It was Kaufman and McMahon—both geniuses—who operated this epoch-making shift in US culture by extending—beyond the wrestlers themselves—the kayfabe (KAY-fayb: rhymes with “day babe”) tradition: stay always in character, on stage and off, and playfully confuse the line between fiction and reality, “between … sincerity and parody.” Jim Carrey famously stuck to this principle religiously when he masterfully represented Kaufman’s life in Man on the Moon, staying in character throughout the whole production, whether or not the cameras were rolling.

(By the way, sticking to kayfabe—staying always in character—is so important to the campy grammar of pro-wrestling that, in 1996, when pro wrestling ‘enemies’ embraced like good pals before leaving the ring at a non-televised—but secretly videotaped—WWF house show in Madison Square Garden, this produced a rather large Disturbance In The Force. It was called the ‘Curtain Call’ incident.)

Later, with his own reality-TV show—The Apprentice—already up and running, Trump restrengthened his ties to his kayfabe master Vince McMahon by participating in the 2007 ‘Battle of the Billionaires’ storyline, where they faced off by proxy with wrestlers Bobby Lashley and Umaga representing them. The event culminated with Trump shaving McMahon’s head after Lashley’s victory while McMahon (doubtless the deliberately worst actor in history) pretended to hate that. Trump also made occasional appearances on WWE programming and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.

So that’s where Trump came from: the absolutely campiest corner of reality-TV. This naturally explains why so many people who expect politics to have decorum find him so offensive. Camp defecates on decorum for fun (if you doubt this, go watch the Netflix documentary on McMahon). But more to our point: camp confuses (con-fuses) fiction and reality. And did you notice? Trump’s playful sacrileges have now been spun as ‘populist authenticity.’ How’s that for “blur[ring] the boundaries between … sincerity and parody”?

Anyway, the background context here is that Donald Trump—an accomplished actor—crafted his public persona as an apprentice to the truly great reality-TV pioneer, Vince McMahon, and then as a first-rate performer of this form in his own right, with his own reality-TV show. When you put that together with the seemingly inexplicable—utterly unbelievable—fiasco of the Democrats in the last election, you have to admit the whole thing is at least… interesting. No? Makes the election feel a lot like a pro wrestling match.

Heck, the first presidential election (2016) that Trump won felt a lot like that too. Hillary Clinton was supposedly his nemesis and he was going to “Lock Her UP!” But just a few years before that, Bill and Hillary Clinton had been honored guests when Donald Trump—back then a Democrat and a donor to the Clinton Foundation—exchanged vows with Melania Knauss in 2005. And Trump, once elected, did not lock Hillary up. Was that all just a lot of kayfabe? These questions must be asked.

The Trumps and the Clintons at the Trump wedding. (Image credit: Melania Trump, posted via Twitter.)

So hear me out. What the alternative—Machiavellian—hypothesis is saying here is that Trump never jumped across the line between reality-TV and politics because that line doesn’t exist; according to this hypothesis, our main character, ‘Donald Trump,’ remained precisely the same spanning that apparent—but only apparent—transition. He’s still acting. It’s all kayfabe. This is a show.

And Trump apparently wants that expert showmanship on the tiller.

“President-elect Donald Trump’s new secretary of Education, [is] Linda McMahon …, wife of WWE founder Vince McMahon, … [and] heavily involved in the wrestling entertainment product for decades, much like Trump himself. She even led the WWE organization as CEO.”⁵

Like the rest of her family, Linda McMahon has been game for the kayfabe bit in the ring, once consenting to receive a (seemingly) tremendous blow to the head, plus being “featured in a series of skits that saw her hit her children, Stephanie and Shane McMahon.”⁶

It’s a con. And you’ve been played. That’s what the Machiavellian hypothesis is saying.

Joe Rogan: “Am I [Truman]?”

The Machiavellian hypothesis posits a production on a truly grand scale. And the mind naturally shrinks in horror from the contemplation of it. But that emotion you feel is not a scientific argument. We must be fair to the evidence, wherever it points. I’ll allow, however, that radical tests of reality are indeed emotionally quite difficult for us, as we have explained here:

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THE TRUMAN SHOW: Why not a radical test of reality?

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One who did seem brave enough and ready to consider a radical test of reality à la Truman Show, at least briefly, was Joe Rogan, in a conversation with Chad Daniels right after the first alleged assassination attempt on Donald Trump. I will quote this conversation at length because Rogan and Daniels seem to me like honest people reacting honestly, and their comments capture the remarkable nature of the evidence that must be explained. (Boldface is mine.)

JOE ROGAN: How crazy is this? If there’s ever been a real indication that we’re in a simulation…! It’s like, this season of ‘USA’ is the craziest season that’s ever existed. There’s so many twists and turns, so many plots, so many villains, so many incompetent bumbling fools (…) This, this isn’t real. This is writing. Someone wrote this. This—it seems like a script.

CHAD DANIELS: When a, when a president that is giving a speech gets shot in the ear and then stands up, goes full John Bender at the end of Breakfast Club…

Left: John Bender at the end of The Breakfast Club. Right: Donald Trump, with blood gushing from his ear, rising on the dais to pump his fist in the air and shout “Fight! Fight! Fight!” (Image credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

ROGAN: Bro! He pumps his fist in the air!

DANIELS: That was crazy as shit.

ROGAN: And he says, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” And when the f***ing guy who is the photographer is a wizard? That guy who got that photograph—find out his name because this guy’s an award-winning photographer.

DANIELS: With the flag above it?

ROGAN: Yes. And the angle that he got. Like, where he was standing, when he took the photo. It’s one of the most iconic photos of all time.

The claim about this photo is that veteran New York Times photographer Doug Mills “was shooting in 8000th of a second on his camera and caught the bullet in just one frame, which he only realized when he opened it on his laptop.” Why was he shooting at that speed? It was a political rally, not a sports event. The whole thing is remarkable and literally beyond belief: “The New York Times article’s expert considered the photo as ‘a one in a million shot and nearly impossible to catch even if one knew the bullet was coming.’ (Image credit: Doug Mills, New York Times)

(…)

ROGAN: I mean the Trump story is right out of a movie and I’m hoping it’s not a Stephen King movie [laughs]. (…) [Reads from an article:] “Secret Service ramped up security after receiving intel of Iranian plot to assassinate Trump. No known connection to shooting.” Oh, they ramped that up!? And so they ignored the roof 150 yards away!?

DANIELS: Yeah. There are so many things where you just go: What the f***?

ROGAN: What the f***?, dude. All of it. All of it. And there’s so much of it that seems fake. Like the female secret service agent that can’t holster her weapon. Have you seen this? She’s like moving around all radically and she tries to holster her weapon. She can’t get it in there and she can’t figure out how to put it in there and she stops for a minute and she just tries back to do it again. And it looks so fake!

DANIELS: Is she an actress?

ROGAN: No. It looks like an actress, though. It looks like, if you were going to have a bumbling person in a movie, like almost like a comedy of errors, or a Cohen Brothers movie about an assassination attempt on a president. You have this lady… [Rogan has the video of the Secret Service agent in question thrown on the screen.] Look, here, watch, watch what her gun… Look, look: she gets her gun out, she tried to put it in there, she couldn’t do it, and she’s thinking about putting it back in there, she finally gets it in there. Like, the whole thing, it’s like, look at her, look at her fumbling around. The, the whole thing is crazy. The erratic movements. No one knows exactly what to do. It seems fake!

DANIELS: Yeah. That’s an audition I could nail.

ROGAN: Yeah, it seems like [the instruction was]: “Okay, now you’re, you’re panicking, you don’t know what the f*** is going on, you really shouldn’t be here. Go!” You’re like: Where do I put my gun?

Like, you want the Secret Service cool, calm, collected. You know, high and ready with the gun, scanning the area, looking left and right. You want them with like swift, decisive movements. You don’t want to see any of this f***ing squirrelly trying to put the gun back in. It seems fake!

(…)

ROGAN: Seems like, as this simulation gets further and further along, it gets more and more insane. (…) The Trump one is just so nuts, too. Like, if he turns his head at the last second and the bullet grazes his ears; if he didn’t, it hits the back of his head and he’s dead. And then we fall into chaos and who knows what the f*** happens. Big chaos. And then people [would] think that the Biden administration had Trump killed… And then there’s these questions like: How the f*** does this 20-year-old kid climb on that roof 150 yards away and no one sees him?

DANIELS: Well, that one guy was pointing at him the whole time. He’s like pointing, too. He’s like, “He’s right there!”

ROGAN: And they’re yelling: “He’s got a gun!” There’s a guy in the prone position on a roof 150 yards away from the former president… The whole thing’s nuts. The whole, the whole thing stinks of either incompetence, uh, or design, or we’re in The Matrix. Like, this is a f***ing fake movie. It seems like, almost… To watch this, the most uh bombastic and, uh, manly of presidents—you know, for lack of a better term—to see him with these two female, bumbling Secret Service agents, especially the one; to see that, to see everything happen the way…; just to see that they knew this guy was on the roof; to hear that that guy had pointed his rifle before that at a cop, so the cop engaged him; he pointed the rifle and the cop ran away; the guy climbed the roof with a ladder (you can see the ladder)…? The whole thing is bananas. He [the shooter] is 20 years old? And then you find out he was in a BlackRock commercial!? You’re like: Am I…? Is this the Black Mirror? Like, tell me what’s going on! Is this real? Is this real?

And that’s the question, isn’t it: Is this real?

I know that Rogan subsequently interviewed Trump, voted for Trump, and appears to have accepted him as real. But on this day, at least, Rogan described the official narrative as a “simulation” and/or a scripted storyline, and he said that he was feeling like Neo in The Matrix or like a character in Black Mirror. And though he did not explicitly invoke The Truman Show, I believe the sentence he left incomplete was going to be “Am I [Truman]?”

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THE TRUMAN SHOW: Why not a radical test of reality?

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But look, before you call me a crazy conspiracy theorist (I am certainly a conspiracy theorist), all I am saying is this: the hypothesis of a Grand Show is not entirely lacking for a context in which to make itself right cozy and at home. Rogan’s reactions above make that very point. And Rogan wasn’t even reminding us that Donald Trump has an extensive and distinguished history as a pro-wrestling-bred, reality-TV actor, even though 1) that aspect of Trump’s CV was obviously relevant to Rogan’s train of thought on that day; and though 2) Joe Rogan, a knowledgeable enthusiast of professional fighting sports, is on record discussing pro-wrestling fakery.

(Also relevant—and also unmentioned by Rogan—is a pro-wrestling technique known as blading, where they use a small razor blade to create a superficial cut to produce dramatic bleeding during matches to heighten the intensity and realism of a storyline or match.)

Anyway, the point is that we have context aplenty to justify putting the Grand Show hypothesis on the table, for it is undeniably consistent with some aspects of the evidence that otherwise are really quite strange.

Up next

Let us consider this Machiavellian hypothesis, then, if only for sport, and see how well it does against the mainstream, right-of-center, polite-society ‘null hypothesis’ that presents Donald Trump as the real deal: someone who really wants to ‘drain the swamp’ of the so-called ‘Deep State’ and protect our democratic rights and freedoms.

I shall proceed to consider the evidence in order to determine which of these two hypotheses gives a better fit to the facts. Proper method will not here pick and choose facts to benefit either hypothesis; we must try to judge, as honestly as we can, which hypothesis requires fewer acts of special pleading, logical acrobatics, or logical atrocities in order to allege consistency with all the relevant facts.

Sound good? Like we do in science—that will be my standard.

And I expect you to hold me to it. For unless and until we bring the consideration of conspiracy theories into the arena of scientific disputation, we cannot midwife into existence that still-unknown discipline perhaps slouching this way but yet to be born: a true science of politics and geopolitics.

What I will do in Part 2, then, is this: I will look at Trump through the prism of his past and proposed policies in the Middle East. And I will show you what to look for, so that, as he proceeds to give us new evidences in his second term, you can work your way towards a diagnostic conclusion concerning this all-important question: Is Donald Trump really independent of the bad bosses, or is he just the latest protagonist in their always-running Grand Show?

1. ‘A 1957 Meeting Forced the FBI to Recognize the Mafia—And Changed the Justice System Forever’; Smithsonian Magazine; 14 November 2017; by Lorraine Boissoneault.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1957-meeting-forced-fbi-recognize-mafiaand-changed-justice-system-forever-180967204/

2. From LaMotta’s autobiography.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_LaMotta#LaMotta_vs._Fox

3. From the Netflix documentary Mr. McMahon, Episode 6: ‘The Finish.’

4. Pro wrestling originated in 19th-century carnivals and traveling shows, where ‘strongmen’ and wrestlers performed for audiences. Matches were often semi-scripted to ensure entertainment and maintain crowd interest. Wrestlers frequently challenged audience members to test their strength or skill, but outcomes were predetermined to favor the performers. These events relied heavily on showmanship, creating the foundation for modern pro wrestling’s blend of athleticism and theatrical storytelling.

5. ‘Trump’s pick for secretary of education goes viral for clips from WWE past’; New York Post; 21 November 2024; by Jackson Thompson.
https://nypost.com/2024/11/21/us-news/clips-of-linda-mcmahon-taking-violent-wrestling-slams-from-massive-wwe-giants-spread-amid-trump-cabinet-pick/

6. Ibid.