Wrestling tycoon Vince McMahon resigned from his position as executive chairman of TKO, the parent company of World Wrestling Enterprises, in late January 2024 after a former employee accused him of sexual assault, sex trafficking, and physical abuse, multiple news outlets reported.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/investing/vince-mcmahon-wwe-founder-exits-tko/index.html
Janel Grant, who worked at the headquarters of the international wrestling company, alleges in the suit “that McMahon dangled a job offer at WWE – and later promotions – in exchange for sex. Grant’s lawsuit also alleges that McMahon trafficked her to other men inside and outside the company,” CNN reported.
The lawsuit, CNN said, said that “McMahon engaged in acts of ‘extreme cruelty and degradation’ toward Grant during her time at WWE.”
CNN included an incident from Grant’s lawsuit that says McMahon and John Laurinaitus, a defendant in the lawsuit who worked for McMahon, “allegedly pulled Grant behind a locked door, forcibly restraining her.”
“As she begged them to stop, one of the men allegedly said to her, ‘No means yes.’ “
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/26/investing/vince-mcmahon-wwe-founder-exits-tko/index.html
This was not the first – or second time or third time — that McMahon had been accused of sexual misconduct.
He retired from WWE in July 2022 after it was reported that he had paid $14.6 in payments to multiple women.
Former President Trump, who was convicted of sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll and accused by dozens of women of sexual misconduct, has long been good friends and business partners with McMahon.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-rape-carroll-trial-fe68259a4b98bb3947d42af9ec83d7db
https://sports.yahoo.com/former-wwe-ceo-vince-mcmahon-152233038.html
McMahon’s wife, Linda, served as administrator of the Small Business Administration during the Trump Administration.
https://www.sba.gov/person/linda-mcmahon
Vince McMahon and Donald Trump appear to have more in common than just being sexual deviants and predators.
They have both profited from perpetuating a fraud with the American people.
McMahon depends on his business model by perpetuating the seemingly benign notion that professional wrestling is real.
Trump came to prominence based on the more malignant notion manufactured by television producer Mark Burnett’s television program The Apprentice that he was a business genius.
The Sun gossip tabloid recognized that the men are brothers in the art of the con.
“Both heirs to difficult fathers, the billionaires became two of the most powerful people in America on the back of glorifying violence and playing to the lowest prejudices of their audiences,” The Sun said.
And there’s more:
“As Trump rose to become the U.S. president and McMahon the all-powerful CEO of WWE, the pair became the best of friends and staunch business allies,” the newspaper said. “Born just one year apart, they were so close that Trump shaved the WWE boss’s head completely bald in the ring at WrestleMania 23 in 2007.”
https://www.the-sun.com/sport/8785673/donald-trump-vince-mcmahon-us-president-wwe-fbi-raids/
Friends don’t get much closer to that.
During an interview with Politico, writer Michael Kruse asked Josie Riesman, author of Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America:
“Former Trump campaign adviser Sam Nunberg told you there are only two people in the whole world whose calls Trump would take alone — Mark Burnett and Vince McMahon. And you say McMahon is likely the closest thing to a friend that Donald Trump has. Beyond the reality that Trump is a preternaturally lonely man, why do you say that?”
“I talked to a lot of Republican operatives,” Riesman said. “Trump and Vince are extremely close. I think he likes to talk to Vince. I think Vince and he understand each other. I think he greatly admires and looks up to Vince. And that you can just find from his tweets — that’s something that’s very much on the record — it is a consistent picture of, you know, this is a great man, Trump referring to Vince, this is somebody who has a good philosophy, this is somebody who knows how to thrill an audience. And for better or worse, we’re shaped by our role models.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/03/24/trump-wrestling-mcmahon-villain-election-00088590
If so, that would make Trump’s primary role models, his father Fred Trump Sr. and Vince McMahon.
National Public Radio aired a story of how Trump’s experience in pro wrestling is like his experience in politics.
Both are insult driven.
In both, “masculine bragging” is part of the show.
“In professional wrestling it’s common for a wrestler to take out a bounty on another wrestler,” NPR said. For instance, the story said, “after a Trump supporter hit a protester at a rally in North Carolina, Trump suggested he would help pay the supporter’s legal fees although ultimately, there’s no sign Trump actually paid the legal bill.”
And finally, the fans.
Scott Beekman, author of Ringside: A History of Professional Wrestling in America, said that there’s quite a bit of overlap between Trump supporters and wrestling fans. “The traditional wrestling crowd is somebody’s grandmother and your plumber,” Beekman said, “and that’s the sort of folks” that Trump brings to his political rallies.
