The Politics of Spectacle: Wrestling, Comedy, and Trump

By Bailey Meyers

As a lead-in to Governor Newsom’s press conference about redistricting to push back on President Trump’s gerrymandering efforts in Texas, the CA Dem’s PR team was hard at work on X. The following post appeared on the Governor Newsom Press Office account on August 12th: “DONALD “TACO” TRUMP,  AS MANY CALL HIM, “MISSED” THE DEADLINE!!! CALIFORNIA WILL NOW DRAW NEW, MORE “BEAUTIFUL MAPS,” THEY WILL BE HISTORIC AS THEY WILL END THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY (DEMS TAKE BACK THE HOUSE!). BIG PRESS CONFERENCE THIS WEEK WITH POWERFUL DEMS AND GAVIN NEWSOM — YOUR FAVORITE GOVERNOR — THAT WILL BE DEVASTATING FOR “MAGA.” THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! — GN”

It drips of sarcasm toward the President and mocks his signature lexicon employed in Truth Social posts. Viewed more than 6 million times, this post on X is indicative of a new battleground in national politics: the politics of spectacle. 

The politics of spectacle is not a new concept, though its application in American politics through social media is a recent development. In 1967, French philosopher Guy Debord developed “the Spectacle” as a reference to mass media in a bid to capture the twisting of political reality into symbolic representations (a “pseudo-world”) in his book, The Society of the Spectacle. According to Debord, “Spectacle” is a social relationship where alienated individuals are connected to the whole of society through the spectacular pseudo-world rather than reality. 

Today, the pseudo-world has stretched beyond mass media, which Debord warned would replace reality with images. Mass news networks certainly uphold spectacle in their constant bids for viewership; a neverending churn of shocking clips and head-shaking pundits designed to gain market share in the attention economy. But it is on social media, with its lack of fact checking, algorithmic support of divisive content, and accessible platform for misinformation, that spectacle has grown beyond Debord’s foresight and created personalized alternate worlds. 

In the democratic politics of yore, political spectacle was well accomplished through witty sparring and tactful communication of facts, holding one’s cards close and logically trapping or slyly insinuating, with punny campaign buttons to boot. It was uncouth to raise a fuss, and composure was seen as an asset essential in securing swing voters and clinching an election. 

In the era of President Trump, composure and restraint presents more as an opportunity to be steamrolled than a counterargument. The President squashes restrained opposition, facts notwithstanding. While policy and discussion used to be the crux of politics, appearance and posturing are what matter more today. As a TV show host, Trump was well-primed. It’s tough to fight a media star on his home turf. 

The President’s spectacular extravagance, from his recent proposed $200M $300M ballroom and gaudy gold appliqué additions to the White House to his obsession with crowd sizes and camera crews, should be evidence enough of his love of putting on a show. Apple CEO Tim Cook tapped into this perfectly when he presented a golden trophy to the President on national television on August 6th as a thinly-veiled appeal to relax restraints on the tech behemoth amid steep tariff announcements concerning foreign-made semiconductors. Others followed suit: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung presented Trump with a gold crown in October. A Swiss delegation appeared at the White House on November 4th and gave the President a gold bar and Rolex, leading to a reduction of tariffs on Swiss goods from 39% to 15%. 

On August 12, UFC CEO Dana White told CBS News that a fight on the White House lawn “is definitely going to happen” on July 4th of next year. First raised by Trump in an Iowa speech in early July, the president intends to bring MMA cagefighting to the nation’s capitol. 

Barring the national security concern of hosting 20,000 people at the highest-profile site in the country, it is a master play by a President who consolidated power by provoking spectacular division and outcry. UFC is violent, a darling of the administration given Trump’s longstanding relationship with Dana White, and its overt display of the President’s whims is sure to ruffle some Democrats’ feathers.  

The word “kayfabe” has its roots in professional wrestling, as a shorthand to tell wrestlers to literally “be fake” in pig latin and slip into their scripted character and storyline. Kayfabe refers to the suspension of disbelief that the audience experiences at a match, the fourth wall in wrestling that shows wrestlers as puffed-up characters rather than mere fighters onstage.

President Trump, in hosting a cage fight at the White House, has made his kayfabe explicit. It is the spectacle that matters most, not reality. 

While traditional fascist leaders have leaned into a more somber kayfabe—a spectacle of seriousness and absolute power—Trump has swung in the other direction, toward the kayfabe favored by the wrestling industry, which is ironic in tone and self-aware in its exaggerations, making the fourth wall pliable. 

Trump’s kayfabe is sarcastic, calculated, meme-driven, and tries to provoke “triggered” responses from “woke” Dems; It positions him as a frenetic comedian who challenges the status quo through edgy crowdwork rather than a stoic politician who labors over press releases.   

In addition to a literal wrestling match at the White House to uphold this image, Trump’s White House social media pages have been doing a spectacular job at showily perpetuating the President’s perceived image as an “anti-woke” fighter and comedian. 

On August 8th, the White House Instagram account posted a video of Trump signing an executive order in his signature black marker with the caption, “ASMR: President Trump Signing Executive Orders” and overlaid text reading “The sound libs hate the most:” On July 21st, an AI portrait featuring the president flanked by eagles and fireworks with overlaid text reading “I was the hunted—NOW I’M THE HUNTER.” On July 14, false screenshots of Tinder showing a recently-deported person “matching” with ICE. The caption read, “Jiejun tried to finesse a wedding for a free pass — BUT ICE SAID NAH AND SWIPED RIGHT. No dress. No vows. No citizenship. JUST DEPORTED. ITS A MATCH ❤️🥰.” Similar posts have been coming out in droves on official political accounts across the federal government.

While this type of “comedy” is highly inappropriate through official government outlets, it serves as a powerful response to criticism. In older fascist regimes, humor could be used to poke fun at authoritarians, showing inconsistencies and hard-hitting truths about their governance. In the Trump administration, however, making fun of Trump’s social posts only adds fuel to the algorithm and achieves the President’s desired outcomes: Further reach, more engagement, and more “triggered libs” in the comments who seemingly justify the posts’ claims. Trump's overuse of AI and memes on the official White House social channels is passed off as all "jokes" despite containing credible threats to political opponents from an official government account. 

In this way, the admin is largely protected from real criticism by shrugging it off with "you can't take a joke". Nuanced, tactful critique has become obsolete in this new political public square characterized by a “louder is better” ethos. The justified critic becomes the butt of the joke. 

Newsom’s recent all-caps message on X was a slick move in PR. By outdoing Trump in a mocking public message emulating his style, Newsom became louder and more brash than Trump, “stealing the cameras” as Newsom said in another X post. If Republicans got mad at the “favorite governor” for his “beautiful maps,” they would be “triggered.” For Dems, this shows a way to respond to Trump’s forceful communications in a way he (and MAGA) can understand and combat Dems’ perception as a lethargic bloc without real initiative to incite big changes for Americans. 

Newsom’s posts on X and speech were proactive, breaking from the measured reactivity and defense normally favored by Dems. The Governor was on the attack, using Trump’s language and the same kayfabe mask to introduce new policy in political offense. 

By inserting himself as a “fighter” in the kayfabe against President Trump, Newsom’s story becomes that of a rival wrestler and comedian fighting for the American crowd’s attention. While somewhat debasing for a politician, it was a necessary step in leveling the field to command equal respect from the audience. The crowd cares about the fighters and their stories. Since 2016, Dems have always been the suits on the sidelines, and Trump has been in the ring. The president has not faced much competition in drawing eyes worldwide in the last decade, and powerful personalities with a capacity to engage audiences at the same level as Trump have not emerged from the establishment Left. 

While Newsom may or may not be the “right” person to lead a counterassault on President Trump, his utilization of kayfabe in response to the President is certainly notable and marks a clear path for other Dems to follow suit. Already, the Governors of New York and Illinois have joined with Newsom in pushes for proactive redistricting, and according to the AP, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin has added, “This is not the Democratic Party of your grandfather, which would bring a pencil to a knife fight,” signaling more offensive shifts to come.

President Trump has ushered in a new era of politics by spectacle. Through social media and comedy as kayfabe, politics once characterized by intellectual debate have turned into an ironic, mass-broadcast cagefight. If political focus continues to shift from factual debate to showmanship, there will be grave implications for the democratic process and the collective pursuit of truth in the public arena. For now, the pseudo-world is the milieu of the octagon—It will be up to the political fighter who emerges victor to decide the extent to which politics will stay in this imagined world or return to the good old-fashioned debates of yesteryear.