Speaker
Lucas Bean Author, scientist and podcast host, applies psychology to political movements

Contexts
Video Why MAGA Doesn’t Care That Trump Lies To Them (YouTube Short)
Author Lucas Bean — The Lucas Bean Show
Date of publication 31 August 2026
Length 2 min 07 s
Related written essay MAGA Loves The Show — Lucas Bean Daily, 31 August 2026

Keywords

MAGA, kayfabe1, heel, unstoppable, victim

Transcript

Why Trump supporters don’t care that Trump is lying to them. There’s a psychological reason for that, and it’s more disturbing than you think.

Political scientist David Moon at the University of Bath published peer-reviewed research on exactly this. He called it kayfabe.1

In professional wrestling, everyone knows the fights are fake. The outcomes are scripted. The rivalries are performed. And the fans don’t care, because they’re not there for reality. They’re there for the villain, the drama, the spectacle. They’re there for the show.2

Moon found that Trump supporters engage with politics the exact same way as pro wrestling. Trump promised no new wars — we are in a war. He promised cheap gas prices — gas prices are over $4. He promised lower bills — they’ve all gone up. And they don’t care, because they were never voting for results. They were voting for the show. They were voting for their favorite pro wrestler.3

Now, here’s where the psychology gets a little dark. In wrestling, the villain is called the heel, and the heel is always two things at once — unstoppable and a victim at the same time. Sound familiar? Trump perfected the role of the heel. He is the most powerful man in the world and yet claims to be the most persecuted victim in the world. His supporters hold both of these ideas at the same time, without any conflict, because pro wrestling trained them to do exactly that — to turn off their sense of reality and enjoy the show, no matter who it hurts.4

This is why facts don’t work on Trump supporters. You’re trying to have a policy debate with someone watching professional wrestling. These people would burn their own house down and, an hour later, sit in the rubble of their burned-down house and watch it burning down on TV for entertainment. Their jobs are here. Their kids go to school here. Their parents collect Social Security here. And they applaud the man torching it all, because the show is too good to turn off.5

Our country is not professional wrestling, and anyone willing to burn it down for entertainment cannot be trusted with power — ever again. Because the next time, there may not be anything left to save. Our country is not a wrestling ring. And when the show is finally over, the damage is real. The people who did this knew exactly what they were watching. They just didn’t care. That should be unforgivable. And the least we should do is never allow them anywhere near power, ever again.

Sources

  • Moon, D. S. “Kayfabe, Smartdom and Marking Out: Can Pro-Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?”, Political Studies Review, vol. 20, no. 1, 2022, pp. 47–61.
  • Moon, D. S. “Sad but true: Donald Trump really did wrestle his way into the White House”, The Guardian, 2024.
  • Bean, Lucas. “MAGA Loves The Show — They Know It’s Fake. That Is the Whole Point.”, Lucas Bean Daily, 31 August 2026. https://lucasbean.substack.com/p/maga-loves-the-show

  1. Moon, D. S. “Kayfabe, Smartdom and Marking Out: Can Pro-Wrestling Help Us Understand Donald Trump?”, Political Studies Review, vol. 20, no. 1, 2022, pp. 47–61 — the peer-reviewed study the video is based on. See also Moon, D. S., “Sad but true: Donald Trump really did wrestle his way into the White House”, The Guardian, 2024. ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Moon’s paper explains that modern smart fans know the show is staged yet still “mark out” — knowingly surrendering to a staged moment as if it were real. See Moon, D. S., Political Studies Review, 2022. ↩︎

  3. Moon concludes that a knowing electorate engages with Trump not as dupes who swallowed a con, but as an audience that bought a ticket to a show it fully understands. Lucas Bean develops the same argument in “MAGA Loves The Show”, Lucas Bean Daily, 31 August 2026, https://lucasbean.substack.com/p/maga-loves-the-show. ↩︎

  4. On the heel — the wrestling villain who is simultaneously dominant and aggrieved — see Moon, D. S., Political Studies Review, 2022; and Bean, L., “MAGA Loves The Show”, Lucas Bean Daily, 31 August 2026. ↩︎

  5. On why “facts bounce off” an electorate that consumes politics as a show — and why a corrected promise only explains a trick to people who paid to watch it performed — see Bean, L., “MAGA Loves The Show”, Lucas Bean Daily, 31 August 2026. ↩︎