The Never-Ending Cage Match Between Rep. Nadler and President Trump

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

Rasslin’ With Power

Perhaps the two most tawdry spectacles in America are politics and professional wrestling, and president-elect Donald Trump has managed to merge them into something tawdrier yet. Trump has been a past performer in the professional rasslin’ ring, having famously shaved the head of World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon following their “Battle of the Billionaires” at “Wrestlemania XXIII,” and now he’s recruited his past faux foe’s wife and business partner to run the Small Business Administration.

Linda McMahon is not without qualifications for the job, we must admit. Say what you will about the WWE, the McMahons have brought it from a small time local circuit to a big money-making global monopoly, and she’s also the founder and chief executive of Women’s Leadership Live, which advises independent businesswomen. In addition, she has some political experience from running a failed race for a Senate seat in Connecticut, where the “tea party” wave of 2010 didn’t quite reach, and she once staged a slapping match with her daughter for the entertainment of a crowd and has survived being kicked and body-slammed by Steve “Stone Cold” Austin‘and “tombstoned” by a behemoth named Kane, so at least she acts like she fights.

More pertinent selling points, we’re guessing, include her longstanding business relationship with Trump, the $6.5 million she contributed to his campaign, and the $5 million she’s contributed to the Trump Foundation, which supports such worthy causes as the reelection campaign of that Florida Attorney General who decided shortly after the check cleared to not pursue a case against Trump University. Trump frequently boasted during the campaign of all the favors he’d bought from politicians during his dazzling career, on the other hand, so perhaps he just considered the contributions another example of the business savvy McMahon will bring to the job, which is the very logic that got him elected.

In any case, we hold to a firm belief in the separation of politics and political wrestling, and contend that if only the founding fathers had been more farsighted they would have surely put something about in the Constitution. The last time the two came together was back in ’98 when Jesse “The Body” Ventura beat out Hubert Humphrey’s son and a perfectly reasonable Republican to become governor of Minnesota, and that did not end well. His crazy proposals for a unicameral legislature and instant run-off voting were rejected by both parties, 45 of the bills that did get passed were vetoed, he was bogged down a recall effort that focused on his use of state funds for a promotional book tour, and he left after one contentious term blaming everything on the media. Since then he’s been best known for peddling crackpot conspiracies and getting in bar fights with war heroes, and Minnesotans are still trying to remember what they were so fired-up angry about when electing him.

At the risk of sounding unfashionably elitist, we’d prefer that people in positions of political power have an innate sense of dignity that precludes them prancing around a ring in a feather boa, as “The Body” used to do, or shaving an opponent’s head, as “The Donald” once did, or getting “tombstoned” by some one-named giant in leotards or slap-fighting a daughter, as “The New Head of the Small Business Administration” has done. Presidents and their highest appointees were once recruited from the best of industry, academia, the military, sometimes the arts, oftentimes those who had proved themselves over long careers in politics, and although they frequently failed at least they did so with a certain dignified bearing. This is an age when reality shows and fake fights are all the rage, though, and with everyone so fired-up angry about something we suppose that the WWE’s newfound political was bound to happen.

— Bud Norman

Who Shot American Politics?

Barring some other unforeseeable catastrophe, the big story of today will be tonight’s presidential debate. The long-awaited face-to-face confrontation between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump, probably their first she since she attended his third wedding to an illegal immigrant nudie model in exchange for a sizable contribution to her phony-baloney pay-for-play “family foundation,” is expected to be the most watched television event since “Dallas” revealed who shot J.R. way back in the three network days.

We’d like to think this ratings bonanza will be due to the civic-mindedness of the American public, which wants to directly hear the words of these two thoroughly horrible people and carefully consider which is worse, but we expect it will be more for the pure low-brow entertainment value. Super Bowls and stock car races and soap operas and the more cutting-edge comedy programs draw big ratings because the viewer never knows what’s going to happen, but holds out hope that it will involve something violent or vulgar or otherwise shocking, and in this crazy election year the presidential debates offer plenty of that. There’s widespread speculation that Clinton will succumb to seizures or perhaps even drop dead to her undisclosed yet very dire medical condition, and that Trump might try to turn it into a rhetorical equivalent of that pro rasslin’ gig where he shaved the head of Vince McMahon, and of course there are already arguments about the poor fellow who has been hired to referee the match.

If Clinton doesn’t drop dead during the debate that will no doubt disappoint a significant portion of the viewing audience, but it will still make for an interesting plot twist. She’ll have already exceeded expectations, which is for some reason or another the way these contests are scored nowadays, and short of any seizures she or her ear-plugged body double should be able to come across as if she’s at least given some thought to the issues she’s been asked about. Most of the media will be wowed, and that portion of the country that relies on them to get the score will hear that Clinton won handily.

If Trump doesn’t turn it into a metaphorical pro rasslin’ head-shaving he probably will lose on old-fashioned debate scoring, because let’s face it, he really hasn’t given much thought to the issues he’ll be asked about, and by all accounts he’s eschewed any old-fashioned debate preparations that might have helped him out. This would no doubt disappoint a significant portion of the viewing audience, too, but at least would allow them to claim that anything less than boasts about his penis size or allegations of his opponent’s involvement in the John Kennedy assassination proved he had exceeded presidential expectations.

Our only advice to the poor fellow who’s been hired to referee the match is to ask the same basic policy questions of both the candidates, then get the hell out of the way. We can’t imagine any winners coming out of this worst-ever reality show, but we’ll tune in nonetheless.

— Bud Norman