The big question ahead of Morrison’s US visit
Donald Trump may continue to bamboozle the media and his haters, but to his devotees, the US President is the consummate showman. But can Scott Morrison match him, asks Miranda Devine.
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Narks have been mocking Scott Morrison as a Nigel No-Friends at the G7 on the back of a photo showing him checking his phone while other world leaders were gladhanding and air-kissing.
But, despite the fact Australia’s economy is too small to rate a formal role at the global confab, Morrison still gets the last laugh.
Donald Trump gave him a gushing shout-out in his final press conference alongside France’s Emmanuel Macron in Biarritz.
Gratuitously introducing Morrison into an answer about the UK, the American president waxed lyrical about our PM and described Australia as “one of our tremendous allies …
“He was here also, Scott. He is fantastic. In fact, we’re honouring him and Australia at the White House in a very short period of time”.
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But before he sets foot in Washington, DC, let’s hope Fantastic Scomo has brushed up on his pro-wrestling lingo because, as is obvious to anyone who attends his rallies, The Donald has modelled his presidential persona on WWE wrestling.
Anyone who really wants to bond with the US President would do well to understand the intricacies of Wrestlemania.
The banter, the jokes, the trash talking, the catchphrases, the crowd manipulation, the belligerent patriotism, the villain-slamming: it’s all straight out of a preordained WWE storyline.
Even Trump’s name is a wrestling trope, since the dictionary definition is to defeat someone publicly.
In pro-wrestling, the bad guys are “heels” and the good guys “baby faces”. At his rallies, Trump assigns the “heel” role to China and potential rivals from the Democrat party: Pocahontas [Elizabeth Warren], Sleepy Joe [Biden], Crooked Hillary [Clinton], “The Squad”, and “Radical Left Dems”.
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He has dragged in the media as villains, too. Penned in the centre of the arena behind metal barriers, he assigns us a heel character as the crowd boos: “Fake News” or “The Enemy of the People!”
His extravagant blonde bouffant, tanned skin and uniform of dark suit and overlong tie can be appreciated in this context.
Trump’s persona is “The People’s Billionaire”, champion of the underdog, the “heel” who picks fights but always prevails.
I lived and breathed Wrestlemania about ten years ago when one of my sons was obsessed with Ric Flair and Stone Cold Steve Austin. So, when I attended a Trump rally last week in New Hampshire the parallels seemed obvious.
For Trump, a longtime friend of WWE owner Vince McMahon, it is an effective political strategy to leverage wrestling’s primal popularity with the masses.
After all, the wrestling audience is HUGE — 800 million households worldwide every week, according to WWE — and its demographic aligns with Trump’s voters: 60 per cent are male, 60 per cent are white, and more than 60 per cent are not college graduates.
Trump staged two of the first Wrestlemanias in Atlantic City in the late 1980s, was incorporated into storylines and inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.
His catchphrase “You’re Fired,” morphed into “Make America Great Again”, which audiences at his rallies chant along with him.
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It is simultaneously alarming and amusing that the Leader of the Free World is performing like a fictional bad guy, but it needs to be understood because much of what he says and tweets is only half-serious.
In our visual, unserious age, the way Trump communicates the great drama of his presidency is in wrestling allegory, as a spectacle of excess.
For example, last week Trump called himself “The Chosen One” in a sardonic aside during one of his comic “Chopper Talk” press conferences on the South Lawn of the White House.
The “Fake News Media” then played its role to perfection, ginning up stories about the President’s “Messiah complex”, which allowed him to extend the storyline with weekend tweets from the G7.
“When I looked up to the sky and jokingly said ‘I am the chosen one,’ at a press conference two days ago, referring to taking on Trade with China, little did I realise that the media would claim that I had a ‘Messiah complex,’” he tweeted.
Trump’s twitter feed, with its outlandish, self-aggrandising dramas, is an extension of the WWE theme. His tweet about buying Greenland, which extended into a mock feud with the Danish prime minister, served to distract attention from a plunging Dow.
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“Stone Cold” Steve Austin, the greatest wrestler in WWE history, describes Trump in wrestling terms as “a heel to some. He’s a baby face to others.”
Trump learned his crowd skills from years sitting in the front row of Wrestlemania, studying the form of stars like Austin and another wrestler turned politician, Jesse “The Body” Ventura, who became Governor of Minnesota.
Trump’s ability to excite the crowd is, according to “The Greatest Mayor”, baby face Rudy Giuliani, “a unique and potent political weapon”.
Like the audience, the “Fake News Media”, especially the “Failing New York Times”, suspends disbelief and plays the role Trump assigns it because, in the end, it’s good for business.
No Australian Prime Minister is better placed to meet Trump’s WWE challenge than ScoMo, Miracle Man, Game of Thrones fan, pop culture devotee, musical bingo champion.
But one question remains: Is Scomo a baby face or a heel?