SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Vince McMahon turned 73 years old yesterday. President Donald Trump wished Vince a happy birthday on Twitter last night. President Trump and Vince McMahon have had a friendly relationship over the years, including when Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, N.J. hosted WrestleMania IV and V, plus when Trump was part of a WrestleMania 23 main event in 2007 when Trump shaved his head, and as recently as regular late night phone calls during Trumps campaign in 2016.
Happy birthday Vince, you are truly one of the greats! https://t.co/b8zV5MfojY
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 25, 2018
Pro wrestling may have greatly influenced the course President Trump took in his presidential campaign. What follows is a reprint of a story we published nearly two ago here at PWTorch with an excerpt of Dutch Mantel discussing his interaction with Donald Trump at WrestleMania 29…
Dutch Mantel (a/k/a Zeb Colter) told me earlier this year on the July 14 episode of the PWTorch Livecast that Donald Trump owes him because he lifted his campaign speeches from his WrestleMania 29 promo.
“I got a bone to pick with Donald Trump,” he told me. “At WrestleMania 29 in New Jersey, I went out in front of 82,000 people – it was Jack Swagger vs. Alberto Del Rio. And Donald Trump was there. After the match, I didn’t know he was there, but I sat down in the viewing area. A match or two later, Donald Trump walked in the viewing area with his daughter and his two sons. He walked up to me and tapped me on the shoulder and I looked up and it’s Donald Trump. He stuck out his hand and we started shakings hands and he said, ‘I really, really enjoyed your speech. It was fantastic.’ Then he walked off. And then I got to thinking when he started running, what he did is he stole my gimmick. He just renamed it ‘Make America Great again’ instead of ‘We the People.’ I think he owes me. He needs to Tweet my name or something. I need some sort of recognition for helping him out.”
So what exactly did Zeb say that got Trump’s approval? Here’s my summary of the speech from the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter #1299 covering WrestleMania 29.
Zeb Colter and Jack Swagger arrived to the ring in their camouflage vehicle called the Patriot Patrol. Zeb said this past week he walked “these filthy streets of New York. He asked, “When did we let them take over?” He stressed “them.” He said it was once a beacon of American prosperity and “now it’s not even worth the beads we paid for it. All it is is a cesspool of criminals, illegals that snuck across our borders and they speak Spanish and they speak Italian and they speak Greek and Chinese and they speak something called Yiddish and they plot God-knows what against us.” Swagger said, “We the People.”
Dutch may have said those things, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with them in real life enough to have support Trump’s run for President “I do like Trump,” he said. “I don’t really care for Hillary all that much. But Donald, I don’t know what he stands for; I really don’t. I think it would be a much better relation if you had Judge Judy vs. Nancy Grace. I think both of them would do a better job than the two we got. I don’t care much for Hilary, I don’t care much for Trump. You gotta be careful. Jerry Lawler said he supported Trump and he got death threats.”
Political news website Politco published a story in early 2017 about the relationship between Vince McMahon and Donald Trump. Excerpt:
He still talks to Vince McMahon occasionally and praises the family’s business acumen and market strategy to others. WWE promotes Trump on its website, and its stock price has risen about 11 percent since Election Day. “In November 2016, Trump culminated his campaign against key contender Hillary Clinton and was elected into office as the 45th President of the United States — the first time in history a WWE Hall of Famer would ever hold the distinguishing title of U.S. Commander-in-Chief,” the website reads.
“I would say to him, we’re going to be the WWE of the primary with the smash-mouth adrenaline pumping,” said Sam Nunberg, a former campaign aide who met Trump for the first time at a wrestling match. “He loved the sensationalism, the drama, the fantasy. There are a lot of similarities between Vince McMahon and Trump.” …
To blue-collar wrestling fans, he created the persona of the campaign trail. Trump connoted wealth and a no-guff, take-no-prisoners attitude, said Michael Axelrod, a Long Island fan, who added that he remembered few other billionaire-types jousting in the ring.
“People who go to wrestling matches don’t tend to like people who make more in one day than they make in their lifetimes,” Axelrod said. “But he didn’t take sh– from anyone and made his own rules, and people seem to like that in their wrestling characters.” …
Frequently, he would closely study the monitors in the production room, trying to read the crowd before he went onstage.
“A lot of people are real a–holes, but he wasn’t. I liked that son of a b–ch,” [Bruce] Prichard said. “He was better than anyone at reading the room. He loved to take the temperature of the room, and he loved the instantaneous feedback. He was really easy to work with.”
FULL STORY LINK: Trump’s obsession with WrestleMania and fake drama
NOW CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE: Interview Highlights: Hulk Hogan talks about his locker room meeting, his disappointment with some wrestlers not accepting his apology, being a role model, talking with Vince and Triple H
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