Episode Details

This one took me a while to fully understand.

For years I kept trying to explain Trump supporters the same way everyone else does. They are misinformed. They are in a bubble. They have been manipulated by bad media. If they just had access to the right information they would come around.

Then I found the research. And it changed everything I thought I knew about what is actually happening.

Because the problem is not that they do not have access to the truth.

The problem is that the truth was never the point.

The Research

In 2022, political scientist David Moon at the University of Bath published peer-reviewed research examining the relationship between Trump’s political style and professional wrestling psychology. The paper appeared in Political Studies Review and it introduced a concept that reframes everything about how MAGA operates.

Moon called it Kayfabe.

If you grew up watching professional wrestling you already understand the concept intuitively. In wrestling, everyone in the building knows the fights are choreographed. The outcomes are predetermined. The rivalries are written by producers. The blood is sometimes fake. The feuds are storylines.

And the arena is full anyway.

Because the fans are not there for reality. They are there for the performance. The villain who cheats and brags and gets away with it. The hero who suffers and perseveres. The drama of watching someone you hate get what they deserve, or someone you love get robbed. The emotional experience of it all. The spectacle.

Nobody in that arena is confused about what they are watching. They just do not care that it is fake because the emotional payoff is real.

Moon’s research found that Trump supporters engage with politics through exactly the same psychological framework.

What This Actually Means

This is the part that is hard to sit with.

It means Trump supporters are not victims of misinformation in the way most people assume. They are not confused. They are not waiting to be shown the right facts. They made a choice, consciously or not, to engage with politics the way a wrestling fan engages with a pay-per-view event. They chose the performance over the reality. And that choice is remarkably stable because it was never based on information in the first place.

Look at the record.

He promised no new wars. The United States is involved in active military engagements.

He promised cheaper gas. Gas prices rose.

He promised lower bills. Every bill went up.

He promised to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it. The wall was never finished. Mexico paid nothing.

His supporters know this. These are not obscure facts buried in policy documents. They are lived experiences. They are numbers on receipts and gas station signs and utility statements. The information is right in front of them every single day.

They do not care.

Because they were never voting for results. They were voting for the show. They wanted the villain. The spectacle. The enemy. The performance of dominance and victimhood running simultaneously in the same body, which is the specific psychological trick that professional wrestling perfected decades before Trump ran for office.

The Heel

In wrestling there is a character called the heel. The heel is the villain. But the heel is not simply evil. The most effective heels in wrestling history share a specific psychological profile. They are simultaneously unstoppable and aggrieved. Dominant and victimized. Powerful and persecuted.

They brag about how great they are. Then they complain about how unfairly they are being treated. They cheat to win. Then they claim they only cheated because the system was rigged against them. They humiliate their opponents. Then they cry victim when anyone fights back.

The audience holds both