The Daily Beast Podcast - What Trump Learned About Manipulation From Pal Vince McMahon

Episode Date: March 26, 2023

The world of pro wrestling used to be sold as real. Viewers were told that the fights, the rivalries, and the storylines were all real-life, otherwise known as a phenomenon called kayfabe. Then, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Vince McMahon turned that on its head. In this episode, author Abraham Josephine Riesman, who recently wrote a biography on McMahon titled Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, tells The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy how a manipulation strategy McMahon used made WWE what it is today (and help to deregulate it) and how Trump came to use that same technique to keep his fanbase coming back. Also in this episode: Riesman goes deeper into how McMahon’s strategy was able to leak into the world of politics, the history of McMahon and Trump’s friendship, and if there’s truth behind one of the biggest quote from her book: “Vince McMahon is the closest thing to a friend Trump has.” Plus! Andy and co-host Danielle Moodie talk about the Republican war on oat and almond milk and make the case that if TikTok goes down, Meta and Twitter should go with it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal.

And we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Abraham Josephine Reisman, who's the author of Ringmaster, Vince McMahon, and the Unmaking of America. And despite this book being about wrestling, we're going to talk about all its weird political entanglements. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips, yes. Hell yeah. Clip meat.

Okay, a new culture war just dropped. I don't know if y'all are familiar with Representative DeB.Sco, but she's in the running to be one of the new dumbest members of Congress. I know it's a stiff race these days, but she's got an entry for us today. Let's hear her out. So when you take a look at all of the millions of people in America who have and rely on a gas stove to cook their night on the meals, breakfast, whatever, and all of the restaurateurs who say gas is the best, You can think that there's a lot of people in this country who are probably remembering the old Charlton Heston line. You can have my gas stove when you pry it from my cold dead hands. I love that saying, yeah, maybe I should put that in my talking points for my legislation.

They're not stopping on gas stoves. They're going after washing machine statues. I'm going to do legislation on that too. I'm going to fight back against these crazy rules. Coming for your washing machines. I know this, that the washing machine thing became a thing, like for a day, I thought. And it's another one of these stupid things. Like there's some idea of making some little change to washing machines to make them more efficient.

And like the companies who make the washing machines were like, yeah, this won't affect how they work at all. As usual, it's such a nothing thing. But it becomes this rallying cry and this war cry. And these people are just, Daniel, I can't do it anymore. Yeah, they're just dumb. And you're making Andy sad, okay? So I need for people, like, the only talking point that Democrats need to use in a response to their fuckery is like, Republicans just want you to spend more money. That's it.

Because everything that is being offered is about efficiency, energy efficiency so that your energy bills go down. Republicans don't want that for you, period. I like that. Yeah, that made me less sand. Good. There's another culture war, though. Where do you find this, Jesse? It's called Twitter.

The place where we all rot our braids all day. We'll be soon talking about the other place we wrought our braids later in the show. Yes. Okay, the war on milk. Oh, my God. John Joyce, I was going to tell you all about it. Bones, muscle, brain, and vital organs all rely on products like whole milk. for healthy development.

The whole milk that cannot be replicated by inadequate imitations that are found in plants and in nuts. Our students deserve better than these fraudulent products, and we cannot allow almonds or soy to be passed off as dairy to American families. It is time to ensure that whole milk is once again available in every school cafeteria. it is time to pass legislation like the Dairy Pride Act and the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act that will support, support families, support the growth of students, and support our dairy farmers. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I yield. I thought at first he was doing the Trump cognitive test, what do you say, like that,

muscles, bones part, I thought that was that. Right. Yeah. All this reminds me of, and I'm sure both of you will agree, a bunch of years ago, a couple of years ago, D.C. Comics had a series called Milk Wars that involved the Justice League and the Doom Patrol and others. And in that, there was an evil corporation that wanted to use the radioactive milk of psychic cows to sort of make the Justice League sort of more compliant. Oh. Yeah. So anytime people start talking about milk, I always,

as I'm sure all three of us do, think of the Milk Wars comics. Oh, yeah. Written by the way by Gerard Way, better known as the perhaps the lead singer of My Chemical Romance with art by Steve Orlando. But look, I don't care what kind of milk people drink. I don't know when like the whole soy thing that has become, you know, sort of endemic on the right where that's soy is some kind of sign of weakness and soy boy is a thing. No idea where that came from, what the idea behind that is, why do I care if you drink milk from a cow or milk made from a plant or from a nut or

from a lagoon or from a piece of cardboard, if they could get milk out of that somehow. I don't care. Everything about this, it's just every day there's a new, phony war in this country. And the real wars are bad enough. The actual shooting wars, the drug wars, whatever war on we've declared this day, you know, or yesterday that is just going to make things worse probably. But they have to come up with fake wars. I don't understand.

Why do they care so much about it? Because then it just adds to the era of distraction. Yeah. Right? So let us be angry about milk instead of the fact that we won't pass legislation to make sure that your children actually stay safe in schools and aren't gunned down by mass shooters. Let us be angry about gas stove so that you don't recognize

that we keep giving tax breaks to the rich. And that's the reason why you can't like put food on your table. Let's just make shit up. And like, let's just face it, doctor or not, this guy is in the bag for the dairy farmers, which I'm sure if you look at his fucking donations, that's where most of his money is coming from. None of this has anything to do with the health and well-being of children. And I'm just so tired of kids being weaponized by this vapid, fucking fraudulent ass party. It just gets on my nerves.

I don't care what kind of milk you want to use. You want to have cardboard milk, soy, milk, almond milk, I don't give a fuck. But I know that whole milk, not that good for you as you get older. It isn't. It's been proven by science, but they don't believe in that either. I know. Yeah, Joyce is from Pennsylvania, which sort of at first I figured he was from Wisconsin, but I think Pennsylvania is either the second or third largest dairy farm state in the country. So it still makes sense. And everything you say about him being probably a shill for the dairy industry, is I'm sure correct.

Okay. One Laura Ingram, Fox News host, she has some advice for how Mr. Trump can win. So I'd suggest talk less about yourself, more about the American people.

You meant a lot of them. Voters don't want a replay of the greatest hits about Mueller or Adam Schiff, but they do want you to assemble the most talented advisors and probably best to treat them well. Surround yourself

with givers, not takers. serious policy people who know how to hit the ground running on day one. No more travel ban fiascos. Run a tight ship. And run against the Democrats, not the media. We all know the press is biased. You know, newsflash. Don't dwell on it.

Deal with it. And maybe, just maybe, drop the nicknames and the petty personal stuff. It was funny in 2016 and even in 2020, but I don't think it works with how serious the challenges are right now facing the country. I sense that the voters are weary of all of that stuff. So debate your opponents on the merits. You know the issues. You have a great record.

Defend it. Who is she talking about? I don't know because it's very clearly not Donald Trump. Because she lost me at you have a good record, defend it. I didn't know who she was talking about. She lost me and talk less about yourself. Which I think was the first fucking thing she said. I think it was the first thing she said.

I'm sure we've all had really. relationships where we've tried to change someone that we thought we could fix them. But this is literally the worst instance I've ever seen. Hey, 79 year old man, be the exact opposite of who you've been your whole life. Yeah, and I know that America will buy it this time. What? Oh, my God. Yeah.

Oh, and thinking that he knows the issues. And yeah, the thing about having a great record, but it's just every part of that was hilarious. What issue does he know? I really would love to know what issue Laura Ingram thinks that Donald Trump knows that isn't about Donald Trump, ketchup, Diet Coke, or McDonald's, because, you know, that was the one thing that he did get right when he went to McDonald's the other day and said, I know this menu better than you do. I bet you do. I bet you fucking do. The umbrage I have to take is there's only one good thing about Donald Trump and it's the nicknames. Jesus, Laura. Let us.

at least have those. Well, look, that's very clearly she just doesn't want him to give nicknames to DeSantis. Yeah. I mean, that's all that is. Like, she couldn't care less if he came up with nicknames for anyone else. But that, to me, is that that's all she's saying there is don't go after DeSantis. Okay. We got time for one last one.

Talk about someone other than yourself. I can't get fast. Donald Trump. Okay. So I don't know if y'all are familiar with Kat Kamek. She's a backbench congresswoman from the free state of Florida. And she has some thoughts on TikTok. TikTok is doing nothing more than harvesting data of Americans all across the country.

And we've seen how they've used that data to target journalists, to target minors. And then, of course, we will prove that this is, in fact, digital fentanyl, that this is harmful to children, that this is not just music and dancing and filters. This is actually a way for people to groom children and to target children for nefarious purposes. Digital fentanyl. That's where we're at. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, my God. How do we feel about that? Like, Danielle, you and I are creating the digital fentanyl. Andy, I know you consume a lot of the digital fentanyl. I do. Yeah, I mean, my withdrawal symptoms are fine. I seem to be able to shut down. the app, no problem.

Clearly, that's just me. This is the new crack. Cocaine. I don't disagree with some of what she's saying. And, you know, TikTok did go after journalists and it apparently used keystroke loggers to see what they were typing on their devices. And shit like that

shouldn't be allowed. And yes, there are national security issues. We've talked about this. But as you've said many times, Danielle, this is also, you know, meta does this probably better than anyone in the world. We're not going after them. And ain't nobody calling for Instagram or Facebook to be shut down.

Yeah, it's, I mean, we have actual evidence of Facebook interfering in the 2016 election with their disinformation campaigns that they have allowed to run and continue to run. And so you have Elon Musk that took over Twitter. The man is a transphobe and a homophobe, a misogynist, and a racist. And nobody said, oh, you know, we should really think about that in allowing that to happen. And so, yeah, are there important things that China, I'm certain, is doing with TikTok? Yeah, there's also a lot of fucking things that we know that are happening with the tech companies that are owned by, quote, unquote, Americans in this country that aren't serving our democracy either.

So, I mean, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So if you're going to go after one, go after all of them. And that's the thing. Like, if you want to spotlight just the national security implications of a country like China doing this, fine. Have a hearing on that. But if you're going to bring up this other shit without mentioning that there are all these other social media networks that do the exact and non social media networks like Google that do basically the same shit, then you're wasting everyone's time. I mean, just concentrate.

If there are real national security issues here, concentrate on those. Because the other stuff is, and it's bad, it's awful, and it's the reason I dumped Instagram. But it's being done across the board. So you can't single out TikTok for it, I don't think. Yeah, I agree. But digital fentanyl, you know, bravo. Yeah, I'm going to say this. Like, that they really got to stop with the everything's fentanyl.

You know, I saw a TikTok to make this very meta the other day. And it was a kid being told by the nurse they're about to give him fentanyl after a car accident. And he wanted to run away from her. And I think that might be because we call everything bad fentanyl these days. Yes, yes, yes, we do. Abraham Josephine Reisman is the author of the highly acclaimed new biography of Vince McMahon out March 28th entitled Ringmaster Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America. She's also the author of True Believer, The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee, which is one of the best biographies I've ever read. Josie, thanks so much for being here.

Aw, that is so sweet of you. It is so great to be back. I'm always pleased to speak with you, even though I've only done it once before. But I... I know, but we're one for one, so hopefully we'll be two for two. One for one so far. Let's see if we can do it. Yeah. And look, if we don't, 500 is still a pretty good average. Yeah. Hey. A ball player would kill for that. So it sounds great.

Exactly. Okay. So there's a treasure trove of unbelievably fascinating stuff in this book. And I say this as someone who I've told you this before, I generally have no interest in wrestling. But there's stuff in there about Vince McMahon's childhood, how he rose to power, how he and his company, WWF took what had been regional entertainment under many management umbrellas and ruthlessly consolidated it so that one company and more to the point one man, Vince, pretty much controlled it all. But being a political podcast, I'm going to jump ahead and focus on, you know, the political stuff. Fantastic. So you write that for Vince and his wife Linda, deregulation was their true induction into the world of conservative politics, which I thought was interesting. And then

somehow pre-member of Congress, Rick Santorum, entered the picture here. Yes, he did. So let's flash back to the mid-1980s. Vince is on the rise. He's based in Connecticut, his company, but he has been conquering much of North America with his efforts to destabilize and overthrow the National Wrestling Alliance, which was the sort of cartel that ran wrestling back then. And one thing that was very true in that cartel was you didn't mess with politicians.

You kind of tried to keep wrestling away from anybody who might do something drastic. And for a long time, wrestling was predicated on the public lie that everything you saw in the ring was real. So that's all the way of saying the National Wrestling Alliance had not made any real effort to get lower taxes and fewer regulations in their dealings. But Vince, when he took over his father's company and then started this march of conquest, he decided, he and his wife, Linda, whose influence should never be underestimated, decided that paradoxically the way to get treated seriously as a real company in corporate America, as opposed to sort of a backroom operation that's very secretive, was to, paradoxically, become more fake and acknowledge that fakeness. it was only meetings with legislative bodies or in lawsuits, if it was advantageous to them and they could be taken more seriously by government and corporate partners by saying, hey, we're all in on the joke, this stuff is fake, then they would do that. And deregulation was a key component in that shift. In 1985, Vince throws the first WrestleMania, which has since become this sort of national institution

of wrestling. And the first WrestleMania was a huge. huge success. And around that same time that it's getting built up and then actually launching, Vince is covertly pushing in the Connecticut legislature and then elsewhere to get wrestling deregulated. Now, it had previously, because of that fiction that everything you saw in the ring was real, it had previously been regulated by athletic bodies in states. So, you know, you had to meet certain health and safety standards and you had to pay certain taxes. It's pretty simple. but it was already a pretty lax system, I should say. There was not a whole lot of strict enforcement.

But even that was too much for the McMan's who thought, well, let's do what business people do. Let's self-regulate if we can so we don't have to pay out or worry about too many eyes on what we're doing. And so they lobbied hard in Connecticut. And their big strategy there was saying in these legislative sessions when they would appear, hey, this is fake. They would say it, not in so many terms. They would say it's like the Harlem Globetrotters or the circus. That was their comparison point all the time.

It's like it's real athleticism, but it's mostly a show. And eventually, this sort of gets them into conservative politics because, I mean, well, for one thing, the essence of conservative politics in America or at least one of its pillars is deregulation. That will give you those bedfellows if you start playing with that. Sure enough, when the. they were doing this deregulation effort, when they were pushing in Pennsylvania, they encountered a young lawyer at Kirkpatrick and Lockhart named Rick Santorum. Rick Santorum at this point had been

like a college Republican and had worked for a congressperson, but this was him trying to really build out a law career. He worked with the McMahon's on this deregulation effort in Pennsylvania. They whined and dined legislators and regulators and admitted that the thing was fake, which is something that Vince's predecessors in the industry never would have even imagined doing, telling a politician, hey, all this is fake. That would have been completely unthinkable. But it was very lucrative for Vince. And in fact, that illusion of fakeness, I say illusion of fakeness, it gets very layered. I hope not to confuse people. But that has been really useful to Vince because not only does he get to be like, oh, well, take me seriously because I'm in on the joke with you. But also, once you have that

layer of just kidding, then a lot of people in powerful places don't look too closely. They go, oh, the product is silly. The product is fake. So how dangerous can it be? And then a lot of bad things can happen in the darkness. Boy, that sounds like it doesn't not have parallels to our current political situation. No, absolutely. I mean, I can draw them out if you like. I want you to, but not quite yet. Okay, go on. I want to build to that. There's a structure to doing an interview, Josie, and I don't think you've quite learned it yet. I know.

Take me. Teach me your ways. It's a pyramid. It's a pyramid of interviewing. I just made all of that up. Okay. Before we get to all of that, I want to talk about a gentleman named Donald J. Trump. I'm familiar.

Yes. Yes. You call in the book, you call McMahon the closest thing to a friend Trump has. And that dates back to, I think it was 1988. and WrestleMania 4? Yeah, so Vince and Trump have been close since the 80s. I've had trouble determining exactly what their first meeting was. The people in Trump world didn't know and Vince wasn't talking to me.

So I don't actually know when they first met. But by the time of WrestleMania 4, which is, I believe 1988, and Trump had this hotel and casino in Atlantic City. And so the story goes, one of Trump's deputies was on a panel at some conference with one of Vince's deputies. And they got talking and thought, hey, wouldn't it be whizbang if we did a partnership? And sure enough, what ended up happening was Trump was billed as the host of WrestleMania 4 and WrestleMania 5. Both of those were held in Atlantic City. And they were ostensibly held, according to the title cards and announcers.

at the Trump Hotel and Casino in Lenox City. Of course, this was all a lie. It was not happening there because that place could not have accommodated WrestleMania. They were at a place that actually could, a convention center right near the hotel and casino, would be that as it may. They did these two WrestleMania's where Trump was a huge player. He wasn't wrestling, and he wasn't in any of the storylines, but him being the host in 88 and 89 was a big deal. He was still a hot commodity. I mean, his hotel and casino went bang.

bankrupt a little after that, the one in Atlantic City. But at the time, it had the illusion of wealth and prestige. So he would do these little appearances where he'd say, you know, we're so honored to have this WrestleMania and everybody tried to get it, but we were the ones who got it. And eventually, that builds out into a friendship and an ongoing business relationship where Trump would appear at wrestling events for the WWF and do little spot interviews. And then eventually, most importantly, there was this partnership between Vince and Trump in 2007 that took the form of this wrestling storyline where Vince and Trump were mortal enemies all of a sudden. They had once been friends and now they were turning on each other and sort of fighting over who was the better billionaire. And they had this match at WrestleMania in 2007 called the Battle of the Billionaires.

And it wasn't them wrestling per se. It was two proxy wrestlers with them at ringside. But there was all this buildup, and there was at least one moment where Trump, you know, did a clothesline on Vince. And that GIF has been much used by horrible alt-right people subsequent to that and they just put things on the face of Vince. Then by 2017, Linda McMahon is becoming, you know, a cabinet member under Trump. She was the director of small business administration. And then she used that to go run the biggest pro-Trump super PAC in 2020. they have a very real and substantial relationship the McMan's and the Trumps.

And, you know, I spoke with Sam Nunberg who worked on the first Trump campaign. And he would say that, and he told me rather, that Trump had only two people in the world whose phone calls he demanded to take in private. Because usually Trump likes the hot dog. He likes to put people on speaker. Right. And say, you know, hey, everybody, look at me. Look at me, you know, whipping this person.

But there were two people, at least as of the campaign, that he would speak to only in private. And that was Mark Burnett, the producer of The Apprentice, surprise, surprise, and Vince McMahon. And as far as I can tell, the family relationship is still there. You know, I don't know when they last spoke. I don't have a bug on either of their cell phones. But I do believe that that relationship is still in existence and probably still pretty robust. And then they also, they have sort of a Saudi connection that binds them together with absolutely with Mohammed bin Salman al-Saud. Right. We talked about this a little bit last time.

Yes. You know, there is this ongoing deal that WWE, which is what's called now, has with the Saudi government as part of the Saudi government's Vision 2030 initiative where they host wrestling shows in Saudi Arabia pretty regularly. And most importantly, WWE gets a lot of money for it. I mean, this is a publicly traded company. You can look at the finances. They get tens of millions of dollars for each show that they do. And it's a huge part of WWE's operating budget. And that partnership is very problematic politically because it was happening. You know, they started it before Trump. They did like a couple little scattered shows that weren't televised in Saudi Arabia. But then this big effort where they're going to have paper views of the Saudi shows and it's going to be this

big to do, that all happens in 2017 under Trump, meaning Vince McMahon is doing enormous business pretty much directly with the Saudi government while his wife is a cabinet member in the Trump administration. Like every Saudi expert that I spoke to about that deal said, I am sure it was about currying favor. It was not just about currying favor. They also got good PR out of it and it's good bread and circuses for the populace, but it's almost certainly a case

where they were not, not interested in, you know, being friendly with the McMahon family, who one of them as a business leader and the other one was a cabinet member. In the finance sector, she wasn't, you know, in charge of some unrelated department.

It's the director of small business administration. This is somebody who actually has influence on this stuff. So it was a very problematic thing and nobody really called them on it in any kind of consequential way. But, you know, what else is new when it comes to the Trump administration? Even if you call them on it, they don't actually face consequences. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about a term you use early in the book and then come back to you much later, Neo K-Fabe. And I believe it's a term that you have invented. Yeah. I mean, it's a variation on an existing term, K-Fabe, but yeah. Sure. So K-Fab is the term that was used to describe the idea that basically that wrestling was real, that it was unscripted.

That these characters were really themselves and all of that stuff, yeah. Exactly. But as you write in the book and as you said earlier, McMahon himself pretty much killed this as a concept. And so you've coined this new term Neo-K-Fabe. So what is it? And feel free to make the political associations you alluded to earlier. Sure, yeah, no, I would love to. As you did, by the way, in a great New York Times op-ed. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, in brief, Neo-KFaib is different from K-Fabe in that K-Fabe in that K-Fabe was a big, flat, solid comforting lie, which was everything you're seeing in the ring is real. Even if you didn't really believe that, it was comforting that the lie was simple, and it was something you could sort of suspend your disbelief about. But once Vince killed K Fabe through that deregulation effort that I spoke of, wrestling was left a bit naked. It didn't have the same kind of drawing appeal because that suspension of disbelief no longer made any sense.

There wasn't any truth to be found. You watched these matches, but it was just fantasy now. There was no way you could sort of convince yourself that maybe it was real. So what Vince ultimately codifies, although he doesn't invent it, is this concept of neo-K-fate, which nobody calls it that except me now. That's not an official term. But it describes the phenomenon where you don't tease people with, hey, everything's real here. In fact, you start with the assumption, hey, everything's fake here. Like, don't worry, everything's fake here.

But guess what? The two guys who are having the match tonight, they actually hate each other. and one of them might really hurt the other in the ring, so you better tune in to see that. Or even better, yes, everything's fake here tonight, but the guy who's going to be cutting an evil monologue out in the ring, he's kind of a drug addict. So maybe he might fly off the handle

and say some stuff he shouldn't say about what happens backstage. This kind of teasing that you would see some kind of forbidden truth or forbidden real action on text. television was what got people to come. So all of a sudden it was not a big flat, solid lie. It was this like surface of slippery beach balls that you're trying to walk across where you have some truths that are so obscene. You never thought they'd be said on television. Some lies that are so outrageous that they could never possibly be true and yet everybody's committing to them and a whole bunch of stuff in the middle. And that confusion was what drew people

to wrestling. And it still is. They don't mess with reality quite as much as they were doing at the turn of the millennium. But wrestling's appeal now is that you watch it to decode it. Like either decode it in terms of, oh, I'm going to appreciate the artistry of what

these people are doing in this fake thing. Or, more often, I'm going to watch because I think something crazy might happen, and I want to be able to see it. And that appeal is something that is so resonant now in politics. Wrestling was doing it before politics, but now we have this political neo-K

fabe where you have people in the Trump vein who get up and say this wild mix of unspeakable truth and total falsity and a lot of stuff in between. And you say it all with an equal level of commitment. And that baffles people. And when people are baffled, they don't tune you out. In fact, they tune in. As long as it's scandalous and thrilling, they will tune in to figure out, to try to figure out what's real and what isn't. The brain gets very caught up in this process of trying to fit something into the bucket of either true or false. But it's kind of a false binary. And when somebody figures that out and is able to give an audience a big, you know, mix of all of those things I mentioned, then the human brain

in the attention economy starts to glue itself to that show. And Vince doesn't do it quite as well as he did at the turn of the 90s, or rather the turn of the millennium, the end of the 90s. But that period at the end of the 90s turn of the millennium, I think was enormously influential on the way politics is conducted today. It really is incredible. And it puts me in the mind of sort of a QAnon thing

where like, yes, absolutely. You know, Trump will give a speech and he'll offhand in the context of something, throw in the number, I'm making this up, 23. And you'll see all these QAnon people going, oh, here's what he means by 23. Yep, dip, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, no, QAnon is always the example I go to.

QAnon and Russiagate conspiracy theorizing. Those two things come from the same impulse as watching a neo-Kfabe moment in wrestling. You really want to decode and parse out what is true and what is false and what the real story is. And unfortunately, there are people who have figured out how to sort of hack that human impulse and throw you enough red meat that you start to think there's a bigger story there and that you're uncovering it. But in fact, very often that story

is either something that you're just delusional about or something that is a narrative that was manufactured for this very purpose, manufactured so that you, as the consumer of this information, would be going, oh, I've figured out a secret and I've figured out what's really happening behind the scenes. And no one gave me this, I just figured it out.

But very often it is something that someone gave you, you just don't realize it. And then you're in the palm of that person's hand. It's a very insidious process. Yeah, it really is incredible. And it just feels like we've moved from, you know, everyone always used idiocry as sort of the template for the times we're in. And it sounds like I'm going to now coin a words. And apparently that's what we're doing these days, Josie. Yeah. We're in a neo-K Fabocracy. Yeah, yes. It's probably going to get worse before it gets better. Before it gets better, yes. I know. So, no, I'm not. So no, I'm. I'm not. So, I'm. I have so much more I could talk to you about this book, which I absolutely adored, but I am out of time.

So I just want to, again, let our listeners know. The book is Ringmaster, Vince McMahon, and the Unmaking of America. Like, don't be put up. If you're not a wrestling fan, don't be put off by this. It is an absolutely fascinating portrait of a man who, as I think, I think Josie has shown in this interview, a man whose success is intertwined with where America has been heading for the last several decades. Josie, thank you so much for being here. Oh, it was such a pleasure, and it's so nice to hear you see those nice things. Ringmasterthebook.com is where you can find a pre-order link. Beautiful.

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