MR. TITO: What Donald Trump’s 2024 Election Victory Means for Vince McMahon and WWE

Once again, WWE Hall of Famer and multiple-time participant in Wrestlemania Donald Trump has achieved becoming President of the United States of America. He joins Grover Cleveland in being the only president whose terms were not consecutive and appears to have a firm command of policy for at least the next 2 years with the Senate, possibly the House, and a very conservative Supreme Court before the 2026 Midterm Elections happen. Trump promises to get a lot done and fast in his early days as the returning president.

Now, I’m not here to talk politics, so if you’re reaction is “ZOMG!!!! NoDq iS tAlkin’ PoLitICs”, then you need to check yourself before you wreck yourself. Thus, let me mark all readers as being SAFE from politics, as we’re thankfully done with Election Day and the many months of television ads, YouTube ads, emails, and texts for now. I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican reading this, as I’m not going to make any political statements.

BUT – As President, Donald Trump does have the ability to pardon individuals as stated in Article 2 of the United States Constitution:

• The President shall have the Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

In other words, if you are federally charged with a crime by the United States government, the President of the United States has the ability to suspend a criminal sentence (or reprieve) or outright pardon someone (relieve legal consequences of a criminal conviction).

Donald Trump has used this “executive clemency” 237 times between early 2017 through early 2021 when he left.

And nobody has completed the impeachment process, though both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump himself were found guilty by the House of Representatives but did not have the votes to impeach in the Senate for both individuals. Bill Clinton was impeached just once by the House for lying about having sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky while Donald Trump was successfully impeached once for alleged Ukraine bribery schemes and secondly for January 6th, 2021 instigation. Again, the Senate could not obtain the full two-thirds or 67 votes currently needed to impeach either Clinton or Trump. For 2 separate charges, Clinton has 45 and 50 votes to convict while Donald Trump had 47 for his first impeachment to convict and 57 for his second.

Unique situation that Donald Trump has pondered, as he has 2 pending Federal Indictments, is “can he pardon himself”? But we’ll see what happens in the upcoming months for that.

Again, this is not a political column but just trying to set the table for the lead story… Vince McMahon.

Vince McMahon and Donald Trump go way back, as both became fast friends by working in and around the New York City area. Donald Trump, on his end, was fascinated by professional wrestling and wanted to become more involved besides just hosting the events. Trump’s facilities hosted not just Wrestlemania 4 (WWE Title Tournament) but Wrestlemania 5 (Hogan vs. Macho). Then, Donald Trump made multiple appearances surrounding Wrestlemania 23 for a “Battle of the Billionaires” Hair vs. Hair match that gave WWE its biggest gate through that timeframe along with its highest Pay Per View buyrate.

Their friendship then extended through politics, where Linda McMahon was trying her hand to become a Senator. Through she failed to become a Senator twice, her experience as a Senate candidate, WWE Corporation President/CEO, and likely connection to her husband, Vince McMahon, gave her a job on Donald Trump’s presidential cabinet as the head of the Small Business Association department. Linda carried that position through most of his term until focusing on the 2020 campaign as one of his campaign leaders.

In case you missed it during Donald’s celebration speech held early on 11/6/24 following the 11/5/24 election, Linda McMahon was on stage with Donald.

Thus, the Donald Trump and Vince McMahon longtime friendship is there and as the recent Netflix documentary on Vince suggested (Dave Meltzer really pushing the idea), it’s likely that the pro wrestling business influenced Trump to become a character at the podium and unafraid to flaunt his confidence, success, charisma, money and women, and fearless to literally say anything. Whether you like Trump or not, things that he has said would BURY any other past presidential candidate. However, Trump says so many controversial things that they wash out and essentially become normalized as “Trump being Trump”. The amount of trash talk that Trump says on the campaign trail is insane and he gets away with saying anything controversial about his opponents.

It’s a pro wrestling heel 101 with his opposition hating him, while many secretly want to be him. Trump is literally the living embodiment of the “Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase character.

Donald and Vince have other things in common, such as NDAs and relationships or treatment of women, which is typical of guys from their generation and wealth. But the real symptom could be friction with their parents building anger or resentment to always want to prove themselves and make their star much bigger than their parents. It’s that endless chip on their shoulder.

While Donald Trump was held accountable in Civil Court for “sexual abuse” and in New York State court for money laundering to an adult film star (Stormy Daniels), Vince McMahon’s incidents have been contained within the workplace and handled either with Vince McMahon pushing back or completing a settlement with an Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Recently, Vince refused to pay someone whom he had an aggressive relationship with and was passing along to John Laurinaitis. When the United States Justice Department caught wind of Janel Grant’s lawsuit against the WWE, combined with other NDA/Settlement allegations throughout the years along with potential Securities Exchange Commission/IRS fraud issues for the payouts, it put the lawsuit on pause as the Dept. of Justice began to review Vince McMahon’s case.

During August 2023, the Department of Justice subpoenaed and raided Vince McMahon and the WWE for their documents and other evidence, while during May 2024, all indications were that the Department of Justice was still fully investigating the WWE and Vince McMahon.

The Department of Justice was established during 1870 as a brand new cabinet department for the Executive Branch, as led by the President, but is supposed to maintain “independence” and “impartiality” so that if needed, they could review the President of the United States potentially committing crimes (or other members of his Executive branch). However, Donald Trump has an entirely different view of the Department of Justice, as he feels it should “do the bidding of the President” as it is an Executive branch of the government. Trump was mad at his initial Attorney General, who is the cabinet position overseeing the DOJ, Jeff Sessions for trying to act independently such as setting up the Russian investigation regarding the 2016 election. After Trump removed Sessions, he went with Bill Barr who once receiving that Russian report, he found no charges to follow-up on with Trump. Until he resigned from the position following January 6th, 2021, Barr was quite loyal to Trump and fit the “do the bidding” role better than Sessions ever could.

It’s VERY likely that Donald Trump will hire a very similar and favorable Attorney General for 2025. Then, said AG can just CANCEL any pending investigations of Vince McMahon.

If Vince McMahon happens to be indicted for charges of sexually abusing any of the women who signed NDAs and received settlements from Vince McMahon of the WWE corporation, Donald Trump can and will likely PARDON Vince McMahon from any charges.

One thing that Donald values is longtime loyalty and Vince is one of his friends from a long time that helped prop Donald Trump up along the way. He’ll pardon Vince because Vince has similar allegations that Donald has.

My question is this… With all of that TKO Shareholder money that was converted to cash from Vince McMahon leaving the corporation, how much did Vince give to Donald during 2024 for his Presidential campaign. From Federal Election Commission records, I could not see any donations from Vince but that doesn’t mean his money wasn’t pushed through a Political Action Committee. But you see plenty of money coming through from Linda McMahon that donates to Donald Trump… Vince and Linda are still technically married and she may have access to Vince’s wealth to make said donations.

But I wonder how much Vince McMahon has against TKO/Endeavor and may encourage Donald Trump to use the Securities Exchange Commission, which was established during 1933 to monitor and regulate the sale and purchase of securities (bonds, stocks, etc.), to do deeper investigations of the WWE’s prior activities or maybe something about the Endeavor/WWE merger that may not have been known by governing bodies reviewing that transaction. Furthermore, maybe the IRS just so happens to perform extra audits of Endeavor/TKO… I find this as UNLIKELY, as TKO/Endeavor literally just paid Vince McMahon BILLIONS to walk away while they still take great care of his baby, WWE, to help it keep growing.

MAKE NO MISTAKE, Donald Trump and Vince McMahon are GREAT friends. And Donald Trump just became the 47th President of the United States and that power should be a luxury for both Vince and Linda to have. Linda standing on that stage tells me she’s returning to Trump’s cabinet. Meanwhile, Vince is going to laugh when the Department of Justice suddenly drops its charges and maybe opens a case against Janel Grant for extortion. You never know with friends in high places.

In just one election, Vince McMahon went from the possibility of being indicted on a federal level to maybe just settling a lawsuit. Elections matter and have major chain reaction implications. And the 2024 election is in the books, with Kamala Harris conceding today and the vote margins make it appear that she’d lose any challenge. Vince McMahon and Donald Trump are driven and thanks to their wealth, covered in Teflon with luck always going their way.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Vince McMahon forced his way back onto the WWE again or has the ability to purchase the company back from TKO/Endeavor.

Mr. Tito Column Archive @ NoDQ