Vanity Fair interviewed Roman Reigns a couple of months ago when he was preparing for WWE Royal Rumble 2025. The United States of America’s 2024 presidential election was brought up during that conversation. Here’s what Roman (referred to by his real name Joe Anoa’i) had to say about supporting the winner of that election, President Donald Trump.
“Anoa’i is a registered Democrat, but he considers himself a centrist. In the most recent election, however, he says the choice was ‘very clear.’
‘One person was giving us information. One person was answering questions, so it wasn’t that hard,’ he says.
When I ask if that means that he backed Trump, Anoa’i pauses for a few seconds.
‘I support our president. Trump is one of those guys where he’s got a vast history and a huge background. He’s been in entertainment. He’s been in big business, politics,’ Anoa’i says. ‘At this point, I’m supporting a bright future for our country. Positive and competent leadership. For us to be what we’re supposed to be—to be a world leader and carry that respect and do what a world power like us should be doing.’
Anoa’i doesn’t back everything the president does, like his penchant for nursing grievances against political rivals. ‘It’s like he needs that adversary,’ he says. ‘He needs that opposition to bounce off of. He needs that competitive motivation or something.’ Trump’s pugilistic approach, of course, is not unlike WWE’s own template. It’s why, in the Trump era, wrestling has been held up as a Rosetta stone for understanding modern politics.
‘To be honest,’ Anoa’i says, ‘the world seems to be more like wrestling than any other form of entertainment.’
Like Roman, I also support competent leadership and a bright future in the USA, but it’s been “very clear” for the last decade that Trump offers the opposite of those things.
There’s no need to beat around the bush here or pretend like what Trump is doing right now is acceptable behavior for a United States President. Trump made it clear that he would try to be a dictator on day one, and most of his actions since then are consistent with that goal of shitting on the US Constitution, consolidating power around him, and punishing his political enemies.
For example, Trump is openly defying US courts in deporting Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador without due process and making zero effort to bring him back. He’s turning on our global allies and aligning with vile dictators like Russia’s Vladimir Putin while making up blatant lies about Volodymyr Zelenskyy starting the war in Ukraine. He’s creating a domestic and global economic crisis with his worldwide plan for tariffs that makes no mathematical sense. Trump is enthusiastically trying to ruin the lives of transgender people and take away their fundamental rights. He’s putting critical US institutions like the FBI, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Health and Human Services under the leadership of extreme wackos, unqualified and incompetent blind loyalists, or some combination of all of these things. The list goes on and on.
The thing is, it was also “very clear” that Trump was going to behave like this and introduce this much volatility and chaos into so many people’s lives and the economy, because he campaigned on doing most of these things. Way too many congressmen, corporations, and law firms are bending a knee to Trump’s lawless tactics, which is disturbing to watch. He’s been on the job for roughly three months now, and the trainwreck is just getting started.
I don’t know if Roman Reigns would give the same answer to this question today as he did when he was interviewed over two months ago. In normal times I probably wouldn’t even be writing this article on my blog when WWE’s top star expresses support for the sitting US president, because once the campaign is over and a new administration is in office, it’s an admirable goal to want to bring people together. But we are definitely not in normal times. Therefore my response to Roman Reigns saying he supports President Trump is to say that what this pathetic dictator wannabe is doing is disgraceful and completely unacceptable.
What’s your response to Roman Reigns’ support of Donald Trump? Let me know in the comments below, Cagesiders.
