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| That stack of bills went right to the Linda McMahon SuperPAC after this scene stopped filming Photo Credit: WWE.comdon |
Of course, governmental response to COVID-19 has been spotty depending on where you are. States and municipalities have been better at creating policy, but the federal response has been rotten since day one. WWE Hall of Famer and President Donald Trump has been getting intel on the disease since it broke in the Wuhan province of China late last year. His response was to call it a hoax and say that the US has gotten the virus under control as hospital beds started to fill up and bodies started to overwhelm morgues. When several Senators received information on the onset of the disease, their response wasn't to inform the public but to do a bit of insider trading to maximize their cashflow in the wake of what industries would suffer and which would flourish under quarantine conditions.
Florida is a state controlled by Republicans at nearly every level, which makes sense given the two major demographics in the state are old conservatives and the tourism industry. Hell, Trump's main residence, the Mar-a-Lago Country Club, is located in the state. Republican control doesn't necessarily mean bad response to the pandemic. While Ohio's response to the disease hasn't been perfect, Mike DeWine has done an admirable job keeping his constituents safe. Again, I don't want to lionize the man given that part of his response has been to reaffirm Ohio Republicans' draconian ban on abortions, but for the most part, he's acted judiciously. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, however, was slow to act, kept beaches open during lucrative spring break, and now he's proclaimed that WWE is an essential business allowed to operate unabated while other industries are under strict work-from-home orders. The blanket order covers all of pro wrestling, so if All Elite Wresting wants to keep doing shows from Daly's Place in Jacksonville, they can. They shouldn't, but they can.
Decisions like these, especially in kleptocracies such as Florida, do not come about by happenstance. Political action committees, lobbyists if you will, have jobs that solely rely on donating to politicians for the express purpose of adopting their ideals. If you wonder why the further up you go, the less likely government is to work for you, it's that your vote is worth less than the paycheck they get from lobbyists. You might want to have a livable planet in 50 years for your grandchildren, but the honorable Congressperson from even the deepest blue states from New York or California will continue to vote to allow fracking to happen if the natural gas lobby or the Super PAC that the lobby pays into, continues to donate to them.
So where do the dots connect? Linda McMahon, who was on the Trump cabinet until she left to chair a Super PAC, well, used some funds in Florida to grease the wheels. The expenditures haven't shown up on Open Secrets yet, but independent reporting shows the group spending $18.5 million on Trump re-election ads between Memorial and Labor Days. While these PACs exist only to get people elected to office, there's quid pro quo going on everywhere in order to find out where exactly the funds go, or which candidates or states get the largesse.
If you want insight into why the McMahon family has wanted to get into government so badly the last decade, it was always for times like these. Linda couldn't get elected to either Connecticut Senate seat, so they took the backdoor. They raised so much money for Trump in 2016, and now Linda is doing it again while Vince figures out a way to close his football league and not pay anyone in the process. Vince hasn't gotten this far in life by being what the kids would call a simp. He knows to get something, you've got to give it, and if you do give something, you better get something in return. It's the capitalist way, unless the other person in the equation is a wrestler or some other worker they deem "non-essential." That's what fundraising is about.
The name "Big Trump Fundraiser" is not a pithy insult with no real grounding in reality. The company is funneling its money into Trump's coffers for the right to be able to make even more when others in the sports and entertainment industries aren't able to. While I don't believe consumption is politics, it's hard to think continued viewing of WWE, even just on the networks that pay them billions of dollars for the television rights, isn't helping Trump get his way, especially in places like Southern states where brutal Republican governance does not reflect the diverse would-be electorate if not for voter suppression. It's true every industry probably has entangled itself in Trump's web, but has anyone done so as enthusiastically and transparently as WWE? Maybe fringe products like MyPillow, but WWE remains the most prominent company that continues to stump publicly for the current President.
Whether or not this makes you feel that consuming WWE is morally indefensible is one thing. What is clear is that the McMahon family doesn't really care about its talent, or else they'd have not spent their way into being the one company that will convince Trump that everyone else should go back to work before the curve starts to go down on this virus as well. The blatant disregard for labor is nothing new for WWE either. It's another way to tell that Vince and Trump are kindred spirits. It's no wonder why the former has been the guy when it comes to getting the latter the most powerful position in the country.
