Wondering what Trump will do about Biden’s victory? Just ask yourself what El Rudo, the Heel, America’s first Lucha Libre president, would do.

In the wake of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' election victory over Donald Trump and Mike Pence, many Americans are wondering what will happen next. What will Trump do? 

Will he concede?

Will he cooperate?

Will he fight in court?

Will he lash out?

Will he try to sabotage the transition?

Will he try to politically harm Americans who voted against him?

Will he try to harm our democratic institutions?

Will he self-destruct?

It's tempting to look at Trump as a collection of pathologies, married to incompetence, but this is not the full story.

Yes, he is a man with many pathologies, and yes, he is incompetent to lead a government. But the best way to understand Trump and to get a vague idea of what he might do in the next six weeks or so until Biden's inauguration, is to consider the world of professional wrestling. 

Trump has a deep connection to wrestling, specifically to the WWF and its later incarnation, the WWE, and even more so to WrestleMania. He has leveraged his connections over the years to become part of the spectacle, including his famous “Battle of the Billionaires” against WWE President Vince McMahon. But none of that holds a candle to his actions as president. Trump's greatest wrestling role, I would submit, is his presidency. 

Trump is our first, and hopefully last, WWF president. I don't say this to malign the president but to understand him. The best way to understand the presidency of DJT, and what he might do in the wake of Biden’s victory, is to consider the role of “the Heel” at a professional wrestling match.

In wrestling, the Heel is the bad guy. The in-your-face bad boy who fans love to hate, and who cares only about playing to the crowd. Mexico's Lucha Libre wrestling has the same character. In Lucha Libre, the Heel is known as El Rudo, the rude one. The role is the same: Be offensive, and play it up for the crowd. 

He is the guy who always says the wrong thing, does the wrong thing, often just because it is wrong, just to egg on the people who care, to egg on his base of supporters who love him, not in spite of his unapologetic wrongness, but because of it. 

The Heel does not care about right or wrong or about your feelings. Or about athleticism or sportsmanship, or even about victory in the classic sense. The Heel cares about his feelings. He cares about spectacle. The Heel cares about attention and crowd energy. The Heel cares about outrage.

The Heel is never the best wrestler, never the champion, and rarely the most popular. In fact, the majority of fans hate the Heel. That is part of his tenacity. The Heel is so beloved by his minority of fans that he has a kind of power that no other can match.

The Heel is almost always the most spectacular wrestler, in the original sense of the word spectacle.

The Heel does not ask, Am I right? Am I wrong? Am I good? Am I bad?

The Heel asks: Are you not entertained?

When paired with a tag-team partner, in addition to attacking the other team, El Rudo will almost always attack his partner. El Rudo also attacks other wrestlers, the referees and judges, the fans (especially supporters of his rivals) and anyone who is not him and who is vying for attention at the same time. 

El Rudo is not a leader, a champion or even a winner. El Rudo is an entertainer, a bomb-thrower, a sucker-puncher. El Rudo does horrible things to his opponents and to their supporters, and even to his own fans, and then goads the crowd.

El Rudo doesn't unite, he divides.

Sound familiar? 

Anyone wondering what the president will do in the coming weeks would do well to ask themselves: What would El Rudo, our first Lucha Libre president, do?