The Politics of the Body Slam

This election season is a wrestling match for the nation's attention filled with viral body slams, arrests, and no one pulling punches.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

Thanks to President Donald Trump and his love of wrestling, the body slam has become the defining image of this election season. He’s pulled both parties into the ring, whether they like it or not. And the truth is, they do. Even in their attempts at defiance, Democrats are leaning into the performative spectacle that Trump relishes, feeding a starved base with viral moments and theatrical displays of power.

Take Isaiah Martin, the 27-year-old running in Texas’s 18th district, who told me on The Tara Palmeri Show, which you can listen to on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, that he’s adopted a “no mercy” approach. It’s a style he credits to Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) and California’s meme king, Gov. Gavin Newsom. Their lesson: in politics today, survival often depends on virality. Martin became a social media star, especially after footage of him being pinned down at a gerrymandering meeting—his district bizarrely redrawn into the shape of a heart—blew up online. He spent 30 hours in jail, but turned it into a town hall. That’s his version of seizing the moment.

“I always kind of believe in fighting fire with fire,” Martin told me. “The Republicans are literally coming for our heads. So I say right back at you.”

Martin argues Democrats aren’t fighting dirty enough, especially the party’s leaders like Kamala Harris, whom he criticizes for running on broad themes rather than concrete issues. Yet his campaign is proof the base is hungry for fighters: he’s smashed fundraising records, pulling in $720,000 from thousands of small donors averaging $19 each.

It’s not just young insurgents cashing in on this politics of spectacle. Staid politicians are finding second lives through viral confrontations. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) saw his stock soar after footage of him being pinned by ICE agents at a Homeland Security meeting in June ricocheted across feeds—suddenly vaulting him into the conversation for California governor.

Twenty-six-year-old Kat Abughazaleh, a Democratic congressional candidate for Illinois’s ninth distrist, went viral when an ICE agent threw her to the ground in the street. In New York, City Comptroller Brad Lander, a former mayoral hopeful, had his own moment on TikTok after he was arrested by ICE at immigration court.

The pattern is undeniable: a body slam, literal or metaphorical, has become the political calling card of the moment. Trump pioneered this Apprentice-style politics, turning every clash into a cliffhanger. Younger Democrats have learned that if they want to counter Trump’s brute force, deploying ICE, the National Guard, and gerrymandered districts, they need their own made-for-social-media slams.

As Martin’s Democratic strategist, Jeff Coote, put it bluntly:

“Just look at the limpdick Democratic response to the shutdown—it’s nowhere near meeting the moment. People have felt these aren’t normal times since before Trump, which is a big reason he got elected. Democrats who show they’re willing to fight are the ones benefitting.”

It’s all about creating competitive counter-programming to the Trump show.

“And then there’s the attention battle Democrats usually lose,” said Coote of Slingshot Strategies. “Viral moments cut through to people’s feeds and hit viscerally—whether it’s Newsom shitposting or just stepping up and having a real moment,”

But here’s the problem: while Democrats experiment with fire-with-fire politics, the country remains as divided as ever. A new Siena/NYT poll shows 9 out of 10 Republicans still stand with Trump and they don’t think the country can overcome divisions.

Meanwhile, the shutdown drags on. For me, it’s déjà vu to Trump’s first record-breaking shutdown, when I was a White House correspondent for ABC News. Washington had never seen a president so indifferent to making a deal, so comfortable weaponizing dysfunction.

Trump isn’t pressured by the usual levers of politics; he’s empowered by them. Now, as then, he’ll use the full communication apparatus of government to cast blame on the “radical left.”

That leaves Democrats caught in a trust gap. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t command the confidence of the base, and Chuck Schumer is seen as too willing to cut a deal. The fear is always capitulation. But of course, the quiet majority just wants reasonable governance.

So here we are: the gloves are off, the bell has rung, and everyone is in the ring. Politics has been fully absorbed into the performance of wrestling. Every grapple and every takedown is another move in the attention economy. It doesn’t lower the temperature or make the discourse any safer. But to win, you’d better be ready to take a slam.