Trump Is Winning the Likability Race

Donald Trump is doing a whirlwind of interviews with independent media in the homestretch of the 2024 election.

As the Republican presidential nominee pulls ahead in crucial swing state polls, he’s talking to everybody with an audience, notably podcasting giants like Joe Rogan and anyone else who is popular and outside the increasingly distrusted legacy mass media. If Ronald Reagan was said to speak over the heads of media members and directly to the American people, Trump now speaks around the former.

On Monday, Trump appeared on The Undertaker’s podcast. Or, should I say, Donald Trump interviewed The Undertaker. Yes, the World Wrestling Entertainment pro wrestling legend has his own show, “Six Feet Under,” with a large audience, and Trump is no stranger to the WWE, with a long history of being involved in storylines and more.

Trump has known The Undertaker, who in retirement goes by his real name Mark Calaway, for about two decades. So when “Taker” asked Trump for a sit-down interview, he obliged, even just two weeks out from the election

For the first 20 minutes of a 50 minute interview, all the questions came from Donald to Mark. 

It was the damndest thing.

The former president wanted to know what it’s like to be in the pro wrestling business. How many matches did he have? How long had he been in wrestling? How did it affect his body? How tall was he in his prime? (6’ 8” was the answer.) How much did he weigh? How much money is the WWE making and how big is pro wrestling these days? Had The Undertaker heard of “Haystacks Calhoun,” a famous wrestler of the 1960s and ’70s that only a man Trump’s age would recall?

It was a relaxed and fun chat. Though Trump has a history with professional wrestling, he asked questions that any non-wrestling fan, an outsider looking in, might ask about this unusual business.

Trump wasn’t worried about hitting any bullet points or making political declarations that might move needles. He was just talking to a dude he’d known for a while, expressing an interest in him.

As a lifelong pro wrestling fan myself, I was entertained by this, and texted a conservative journalist friend about how so much of Trump’s interview with Calaway was just the former president asking The Undertaker wrestling questions. I found it charming and comical. My friend replied that when Trump was interviewed by popular podcaster Theo Von in September, a large portion of the opening was Trump asking about the host’s former drug addiction and asking how he was staying sober now—in short, taking an interest in the person who was interviewing him.

When Kamala Harris has appeared on The View, or with Oprah Winfrey, or in any of the many softball interviews she eventually did after ducking all interviews for weeks after her nomination, the Democrat presidential candidate is trying to make a personal connection with the audience. Most politicians do this because it can register as much or more with voters than particular policy positions.

Coming out of the Democratic National Convention in late August, the undemocratically anointed Harris enjoyed a roughly month-long honeymoon period that put her slightly ahead of Trump in the polls. Now, in late October, as Trump is now slightly ahead, Harris has had to do actual adversarial interviews, most notably a poorly received sit-down with Fox News’s Bret Baier.

As voters have seen a more naked Harris in very limited interviews, her numbers have dipped. As voters have seen an absolutely naked Trump—is he ever any other way?—in interviews that are not necessarily designed to be hit jobs from the get-go, like those with The Undertaker or Theo Von, his numbers have increased.

From a partisan perspective, I could tell you that Kamala Harris was California’s attorney general who sent countless nonviolent drug offenders, mostly black men, to jail, cackled about it, and also blocked evidence to keep possibly innocent people on death row. A real terror. But some voting for her might not have any of this in mind, or even policy, instead seeing a wife, a stepmom, a woman of color, or even the “joy” her campaign has emphasized. Perhaps they even see her as a break from the contentiousness of the Trump era.

Conservatives can laugh at these things, but personalities do play a significant role in politicians’ popularity and unpopularity. Reagan understood this. So did the ever-popular Barack Obama.

Democrats want you to know that Trump is an election denier, a convicted felon, a sexual assaulter, and Adolf Hitler. For Democrats, that is all you are permitted to know about Trump and is basically all you can expect to hear from establishment politicians and their media. For them, it’s that simple.

But Trump is talking to independent media, much of which now has far more reach, and more importantly, trust, than the dying legacy media. Instead of a Nazi dictator, millions of voters are seeing a guy jovially serving fries at McDonald’s when he’s not talking to The Undertaker or Theo Von.

Of course, this can work both ways. The actual, real life Hitler loved dogs and was an artist. He also systematically murdered six million people. The latter makes the former irrelevant.

Trump, who has not systematically murdered six million people, is, in fact, an egotistical and narcissistic individual, and often his own worst enemy. But then again, so is Harris. Both have terrible personal and public flaws, and have had horrible policies as leaders.

Both are also people, even relatable ones. This is something Democrats want to heavily emphasize with Harris, while hoping much of the Biden-Harris policy record will be ignored. This kind of humanization is something Democrats want to deny Trump, who has come across as more likable in his many recent, lengthy interviews than his critics are comfortable with.

For them, Trump is Hitler and only Hitler. It’s all he can ever be. It’s all he must be.

But his poll numbers are going up. And rest assured, those voters aren’t supporting Hitler.

“This is the Donald Trump that people don’t really get to see,” remarked Calaway halfway through their interview. “I think you need to show more this part of you… I just think some people get caught up in the fact that… I think they look at politics now, kind of like a wrestling story.”

They do, and, as The Undertaker insinuates, there are good guys and bad guys. Democrats’ almost sole strategy has been to insist that Donald Trump is definitely and unquestionably, the bad guy.

That might not be working anymore.