For months, Donald Trump has been going on the attack against Jack Smith, the special prosecutor tasked with two criminal investigations involving the former president—and who appears likely to indict the former president. One investigation focuses on the 26 boxes’ worth of classified documents Trump took back to his Mar-a-Lago property; the other seeks to determine whether he unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election.
Trump has laid into Smith in screeds on Truth Social and in speeches, questioning the authenticity of Smith’s name and calling his work “treasonous.”
Upon Smith’s appointment last year, Trump wrote that he was a “Trump Hating THUG” and a “fully weaponized monster.” This quickly spread, with some of Trump’s biggest supporters in Washington, including Sen. Ted Cruz, Rep. Elise Stefanik, and Rep. Jim Jordan, also arguing that Smith and the Department of Justice were corrupt. A few months later, Trump began questioning whether Jack Smith was the prosecutor’s real name, and went so far as to call him an “unfair Savage.” The name-questioning got so bad (“What did his name used to be?”) that Smith’s hometown paper felt compelled to track down Smith’s high school yearbook, and now, the whole world can ponder his 1980s borderline-mullet situation. (He is, indeed, identified as Jack Smith, Class of ’87).
But Trump is still going strong. Just a few weeks ago, Trump blasted Smith in a series of Truth Social posts calling him a “TRUMP Hating Special Prosecutor” who is “working overtime on this treasonous quest.” Trump’s lawyers even asked Attorney General Merrick Garland for a meeting to discuss their perceived “unfair” treatment by Smith.
One might wonder about the wisdom of attacking a government-appointed prosecutor who is actively investigating you. What’s Trump’s angle here?
Trump isn’t technically violating any rules or laws by publicly attacking Smith, but he could be hurting his own case, according to frequent Slate contributor Robert Katzberg, a former federal prosecutor who now focuses on white-collar criminal cases for Holland & Knight. If a grand jury votes to indict Trump on either of Smith’s investigations, his online rhetoric could put a bad taste in the mouth of the judge assigned to his case. “No one likes to be insulted. No one likes to be attacked,” said Katzberg. “It can’t be good. It’s not good for Trump, it’s just more self-inflicted wounds.”
So why do it?
To Katzberg, it’s a simple case of Trump being characteristically impulsive and reacting emotionally. “I just don’t think he’s able to control himself. Any experienced lawyer would have resigned a long time before that.”
Trump has similarly gone after all the other prosecutors currently investigating him. He called Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who recently charged Trump with 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with alleged hush money payments, a “degenerate psychopath that truly hates the USA.” He’s also attacked New York Attorney General Letitia James and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, calling them “racists in reverse.” Rather than being a reflection of any strategy, Katzberg says, it’s a sign that Trump “has the thinnest skin of any human being in history and is incapable of keeping his mouth closed.”
And it’s an example of Trump doing what he always does—working his audience like a pro wrestler.
Chris Kelly, author of the book The Donald: How Trump Turned Presidential Politics into Pro Wrestling, said this isn’t by accident, either—Trump has had a long relationship with World Wrestling Entertainment, dating back to the ’80s. He’s hosted WrestleMania at Trump Plaza twice and fake “bought” Monday Night Raw. Once he became president, he even appointed Linda McMahon—wife of the former CEO of WWE—to be head of the Small Business Administration.
The way Trump stirs up his audience by hamming up these attacks mirrors the way villain characters in wrestling—heels—cut promos on their opponents (i.e., build themselves up against whoever they’re feuding with in interviews). Like wrestlers do, Trump has taken the kernel of his real personality and turned the volume dial up to create a larger-than-life character: The Donald.
“I think that’s part of why it’s been so resonant. He’s not out there with charts and facts and figures, he just hits it at an emotional level. He can play this heel and this persona,” Kelly said.
And people tend to love a heel, because the heel gets to do things they can’t do in real life. “Those are always the great wrestlers that fans like,” he said. “They say, ‘Oh I’d love to be the guy that can slam his boss in the ring, or can knock out my enemies.’ ”
Trump’s tendency to create catchy, funny nicknames for people he’s attacking is also reminiscent of wrestlers coming up with epithets for each other. And like a wrestler, Trump plays off the crowd reaction—testing what appeals to his audience. “We’ve seen this before, where he comes up with nicknames and maybe tries it out, it doesn’t resonate, and he changes course,” Kelly said.
In other words, Trump’s attacks on Jack Smith might seem bizarre and legally unwise—but if he keeps doing it, that could be because it resonates with his base. However, Trump aides told the New York Times the bravado may be masking a deeper anxiety, since Smith’s investigations are serious business that, if successful, could land him in prison.
Whether these attacks are an impulsive temper tantrum or a tactic to play on his supporters’ emotions, there is one thing everyone agrees on: Trump isn’t going to stop anytime soon. It’s essential to his magic.
To get your head around this, it’s helpful to understand the wrestling concept of “kayfabe.” Here’s how a sociologist named Nick Rogers described it in relation to Trump in a 2017 New York Times opinion piece:
Although the etymology of the word is a matter of debate, for at least 50 years “kayfabe” has referred to the unspoken contract between wrestlers and spectators: We’ll present you something clearly fake under the insistence that it’s real, and you will experience genuine emotion. Neither party acknowledges the bargain, or else the magic is ruined.
To a wrestling audience, the fake and the real coexist peacefully. If you ask a fan whether a match or backstage brawl was scripted, the question will seem irrelevant. You may as well ask a roller-coaster enthusiast whether he knows he’s not really on a runaway mine car. The artifice is not only understood but appreciated: The performer cares enough about the viewer’s emotions to want to influence them. Kayfabe isn’t about factual verifiability; it’s about emotional fidelity.
Trump spins a narrative about how he’s being unfairly persecuted by elites in the hopes that it hits on real emotions his supporters are feeling about their personal experiences with the government. He plays the heel in various ways, riling up the crowd against perceived enemies, —such as special prosecutor Jack Smith. It’s also the essential tool in Trump’s 2024 campaign for president.
“It’s been very difficult to kind of defeat him at his own game, because very few politicians have taken him up on combating him in the same type of language he uses,” Kelly said. “He’s starting again in the primary. It’s unclear if any of these other competitors can match the same tactic, because it’s been largely a winning one.”
