We read that the World Wrestling Entertainment franchise just had another big-bucks pay-per-view “Wrestlemania,” with reigning women’s champion Becky Lynch besting both Rhonda Rousey and Charlotte Flair in a rare triple threat match and unprecedented all-woman headline bout. As usual we declined to pay to view it, but it will eventually be free on YouTube, and for trash-talking and body-slamming and eye-gouging entertainment we don’t think it can compete with the political battle between President Donald Trump and New York Rep. Jerry Nadler.
By now you surely know who Trump is. Aside from being President of the United, he’s the billionaire real estate mogul and failed casino-operator and reality show star who once body-slammed and shaved the head of WWE owner Vince McMahon in a “Battle of the Billionaires” on a past big-bucks pay-per-view “Wrestlemania,” which YouTube can verify we’re not making up. Die-hard Kansas devotees of political blood sport that we are we’ve only recently become aware of the existence of Nadler, but apparently the political junkies in New York already know that Nadler’s been successfully going toe-to-toe against Trump for the past several decades.
The feud started way back in ’85, when Trump was an ambitious 30-something real estate wheeler-dealer who wanted to transform a dilapidated section of New York City into a “Television City” with the world’s tallest skyscraper, and make it “the greatest piece of land in urban America.” Nadler was a mere New York assemblyman at the time, representing the district that Trump wanted to transform, and where most of the constituents absolutely hated the idea, but he waged a fairly effective fight. Trump did get to build some buildings, but none of them were the tallest skyscraper in the world, and that area isn’t the most valuable piece of land in urban America, but the mostly middle class people there seem to prefer Nadler to Trump. Since the ’80s Nadler has been elected to the House of Representatives, where he blocked Trump’s plans to relocate a federal highway to accommodate one of his development plans, and the latest election results show that at least in New York City Nadler is far more popular than Trump.
Trump has since been elected the President of the United States, but over the past 14 terms Nadler has risen to the chairmanship of the House Judiciary Committee, where he has the legal authority to subpoena all sorts of things and make all kind of trouble for Trump. These matters will eventually be resolved in court according to the constitution, rather than WWE rules, so we give the formidable Nadler at least a fighting chance.
Back in the ’80s Nadler was conspicuously overweight, and Trump was still relatively svelte, so Trump dubbed him “Fat Jerry” in their tabloid war of words. These days Nadler has slimmed down some and Trump is pretty fat, but Trump recently revived the “Fat Jerry” slur in front of a group of uncomfortable Republican senators, and we expect that Trump’s die-hard fans will love the way that at least he fights. The feud doesn’t seem likely to end anytime soon, though, and in the meantime this Nadler fellow will probably get some licks in.
So far as we can tell this Nadler fellow is one of those damned Democrats, and from New York City to boot, but the courts don’t seem to put much weight on the weight of the litigants, and neither do we, and these days our old Kansas Republican souls don’t have a dog in these fights between two New York City boys, and we know it’s all rigged anyway.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 