President Donald Trump apparently believed that professional wrestling matches were completely organic events — and nearly fell out of his seat watching one with disbelief, according to The New Yorker.
The revelation came as part of a deeper dive into how wrestling mogul Linda McMahon, now the head of Trump's Department of Education, approached her position and the influence she has over the administration.
"When Donald Trump was a kid, his favorite wrestler was Antonino Rocca, though Trump called him Rocky Antonino, and when classmates tried to correct him he insisted that he was right," wrote Zach Helfand. "One can see why wrestling appealed to him — the crowd is everything, the rules mean nothing, and the referees are so feckless that they often get knocked out and everyone laughs."
"In the late eighties, Trump hosted WrestleMania IV and V at the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City," the report continued. "The shows bombed, but Trump enjoyed himself. The wrestler Bret Hart remembered Trump almost falling out of his chair when Hart appeared to crack his face on a metal turnbuckle. 'He believed it,' Hart told me. 'He couldn’t believe I didn’t get killed.'"
Professional wrestling is widely known to be a staged spectacle, where the stunts performed during the matches are choreographed and scripted ahead of time for maximum entertainment.
McMahon has come under controversy for making it her stated goal to dismantle the very department she is running, as well as for how she has conducted tours around the country to exclude those who might disagree with her positions.