Do you want to understand Donald Trump? So watch macho 80s action movies | Action and adventure films

It is quite possible that Donald Trump sees no distinction between the terms strongman and strongman. During the presidential debate last month, Kamala Harris said world leaders were laughing at Trump. In response, Trump cited his support of Hungary's autocratic Prime Minister, Viktor Orbn: one of the most respected men, he is called a strongman. He's a tough, intelligent person.

Two months before this debate, the Republican National Convention had welcomed a strongman or, at least, a man who embodied a certain kitschy version of '80s strength. Hulk Hogan, former standard-bearer of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) , rose to fame as a human cartoon character, a pumped-up avatar of American determination and supremacy. During his time in the spotlight, Hogan fought against stereotypes of America's enemies, the proudly Iranian Iron Sheik, the proudly Russian Nikolai Volkoff and Sgt Slaughter, a former US Marine who had turned on his own country to sympathize with Saddam Hussein. That evening, Hulk Hogan was at the RNC to lend his support to Trump's third presidential campaign, a character who tapped into a powerful vein of nostalgia for the mythologized 1980s, an era characterized by muscular action movie heroes , wrestlers and unabashed displays of machismo.

Donald Trump and Hulk Hogan had already crossed paths at least once. This was during Trump's real estate heyday in the '80s, long before he entered politics, the Trump era captured in the new biopic The Apprentice. In 1989, Atlantic City's Trump Plaza hosted WrestleMania V, the second consecutive WrestleMania event to take place in Trump's golden gaming temple. As Trump watched from the front row, Hogan defeated his former tag team partner, Macho Man Randy Savage, to win the WWF (now WWE) Championship. At the RNC, Hogan returned to this moment: I was bleeding like a pig and I won the world title right in front of Donald J Trump! And you know something? He's going to win in November, and we'll all be champions again when he wins!

Hulk Hogan has been playing a version of this character for decades. When he breaks character, bad things show up, like the leaked 2007 video of him calling racial slurs while in bed with a friend's wife. But Hogan always found an audience for his '80s DayGlo persona, and that's what he brought to the stage at the RNC. Hogan pulled out all the stops. It came out to Real American, his old theme song. He rolled out his slogans. He tore off a T-shirt, one that showed his shirtless young self waving an American flag to reveal the Trump-Vance campaign shirt underneath.

Days before Hogan's speech at the RNC, someone tried to shoot Trump. A would-be assassin shot at him, killing one of his followers and seriously injuring two others. In a performance worthy of the original Hulk Hogan, Trump immediately stood in front of his audience, pumping his fist and shouting. The image of blood splattered on Trump's face, the Secret Service agents gathered all around him, the American flag waving behind it, it was the kind of thing that could have been on Hogan's T-shirt. Indeed, bootleg Trump shirts after the shooting immediately proliferated on boardwalk stands in America's beach towns.

This simplified image of strongman heroism has long appealed to Trump. In a 1997 New Yorker profile, writer Mark Singer depicted Trump flying to his Mar-a-Lago estate aboard his own heavily-equipped 727 plane. (Ghislaine Maxwell, later convicted of child sex trafficking, was one of the passengers.) En route, Trump tries to watch Michael, the 1996 Norah Ephron film in which John Travolta plays an angel descended to Earth. But Trump is bored, so he switches to a VHS copy of Jean-Claude Van Damme's 1988 vehicle Bloodsport. Trump's son, Eric, then 13, is given the important task of fast-forwarding to— beyond the exposition, straight to the fight scenes. (It's a perfectly valid way to watch Bloodsport, by the way, and Trump isn't wrong when he calls it an incredible, fantastic movie.)

Damme breaks Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bolo Yeung in Bloodsport (1988). Photography: FlixPix/Alamy

Bloodsport is a shining example of the same type of hyper-aggressive, muscular masculinity that thrived in '80s action cinema. Van Damme plays Frank Dux, a U.S. Army captain who wins the Kumite, a fighting tournament secret and illegal. The film was based on stories told by the real Frank Dux, which were discredited upon the film's release. But it doesn't matter that Bloodsport's narrative is invented. Sometimes the truth can't stand in the way of a satisfying story about an American who outlasts his competitors through sheer force of will. In Bloodsport, Frank Dux is a strong man.

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For decades, the American presidency has flattered and tailored the country's image in ways that overlap with Hollywood's.

Action films of the '80s and '90s revolved around a few A-list stars who trumpeted American strength as they took on enemies, foreign and domestic. Some of these stars, like Van Damme and Arnold Schwarzenegger, were not born in the United States, but the scripts rarely bothered to explain their accents. Most of the heroes were as screwed up as Hulk Hogan, who also flirted with Hollywood, casting Sylvester Stallone in a Rocky III cameo and starring in a few of his own low-budget vehicles. These action films told simple, primitive stories and fueled the myth of American exceptionalism. Trump, a washed-up New York real estate mogul whose divorces and financial woes were prime tabloid bait in the '80s and '90s, makes a strange avatar for this kind of bloodthirsty fantasy imagery, but he was delighted to take on this role.

For decades, the American presidency has responded to the country's image in ways that overlap with Hollywood's. John F. Kennedy rubbed shoulders with movie stars while projecting the same charm as movie heroes. Ronald Reagan was a movie star and he knew how to ride a horse, wear sunglasses, and reference the right quotes from Rambo and Dirty Harry at just the right time. Trump became a celebrity long before he entered politics, and he earned a handful of credits, usually in '90s family comedies like Home Alone 2 and The Little Rascals. Starting in 2004, Trump gained new fame as host of The Apprentice, the reality show where people competed to demonstrate their mastery of salesmanship. Trump himself represented the high point of that trip, the epitome of luxury and success that candidates sought in a different kind of action hero.

As the vascular action epics of the late Cold War faded from blockbuster dominance, other parts of American culture became vehicles for the kind of triumphant male domination that these films once represented. While The Apprentice worked its magic on the public's perception of Trump, rappers such as 50 Cent presented themselves as true action heroes. Trump was a popular name that appeared on rap records for decades. He got into it, making an appearance on a Method Man album in 1998 and spending time on 50 Cents G-Unit Radio in 2006. He also returned to the world of wrestling.

Donald Trump canvassing votes in the ring before WrestleMania 23 at Detroits Ford Field in 2007. Photograph: Leon Halip/WireImage

In 2007, Trump participated in WrestleMania 23, with Trump and WWE Chairman Vince McMahon choosing wrestlers to act as their avatars. In the Battle of the Billionaires, Trump's champion Bobby Lashley defeated McMahon's man Umaga, and Trump himself attacked McMahon when he tried to interfere in the match. In the aftermath, Trump and Lashley shaved the head of a sobbing McMahon, but the lasting image of the match is of Trump punching the air on a pole strikingly similar to the one he hit after the Pennsylvania shooting .

Trump made his name as a political entity by challenging then-President Barack Obama's citizenship and then portraying himself as the hero who would unmask the forces secretly arrayed against America. When he first ran for president, in 2016, Trump gained the support of Van Damme and Steven Seagal. As president, Trump welcomed Stallone to the White House while granting a ceremonial pardon to the late boxing champion Jack Johnson. The only '80s action star who remained staunchly anti-Trump was Schwarzenegger, who replaced Trump as host of the rebooted Apprentice. When the Schwarzenegger-hosted version failed to catch on, Trump publicly rejoiced.

Everyone in Trump's orbit, from action stars to rappers, is working to help him bolster his image as a man of action, a strong man. This is the Donald Trump his campaign presents to the world. In the NFT trading cards that Trump sells at premium prices to his supporters, his own cartoonishly chiseled CGI face juts out from his chin and flexes his muscles; it's almost a fever dream AI image of Trump's strongman self-image.

In real life, Donald Trump may be a self-centered businessman with multiple criminal convictions, but he continues to build an image as the ultimate crusader who won't stop until his enemies, who also happen to be America's enemies will not have been defeated. In this formulation, he embodies the fantasy dream of the 80s, a version of Hulk Hogan competing in an entirely different arena. Soon we will know whether American voters will embrace this strongman act.

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