The Dictatorship
Hulk Hogan’s ‘real America’ peak was fun to watch. It was also a warning.
Hulk Hogan’s most memorable movie role was just 44 seconds long. At some point in the middle of 1990’s “Gremlins 2,” the titular monsters cause so much chaos that the movie itself stops. In a meta twist, the scene shifts to a movie theater where “Gremlins 2” is playing, and gremlins in the projection booth have destroyed the film reel. An usher asks a theatergoer for help. That theatergoer turns out to be Hulk Hogan (as himself); he stands up, gripping his popcorn, and screams at the gremlins that he’ll beat them up if they don’t restart the movie. “Do you think you gremsters can stand up to the Hulkster?”
The gremlins are duly cowedand the movie resumes. In 1990, neither man nor movie monster could stand up to his bluster — or his biceps, which he liked to call his “24-inch pythons.”
Reagan-era America was saturated with violent jingoism — and pop culture was no exception.
Hogan, who died on Thursday, was the most iconic figure to emerge from the world of professional wrestling. As political commentator Carl Beijer puts itthe Hulkster “almost singlehandedly elevated professional wrestling from a regional curiosity that toured in high school gyms and county fairs to a global multimillion (eventually billion) dollar industry.” This made him “the most important professional wrestler who ever lived,” though Beijer also calls him “an absolute trainwreck of a human being,” citing memorable episodes like Hogan being caught on tape delivering an N-word-laden rant while he was in bed with a friend’s wife, and then participating in a Peter Thiel-funded lawsuit that killed Gawker for publishing that tape on its site.
The “Gremlins 2” appearance came when Hogan’s career was still going strong, but it presaged his long descent into a schlocky nostalgia act. It can be hard to remember just what the Hulk Hogan phenomenon was like during his 1980s peak — in the middle of the Reagan years and during the last, shrieking years of the Cold War.
During the height of 1980’s “Hulkamania,” Hogan frequently talked about his three “demandments” — training, saying prayers and eating vitamins. (He later added a fourth demandment, “believe in yourself.”) I’m not sure who ever believed that “vitamins” were all that built Hogan’s “24-inch pythons,” and in the post-Gawker era it had become painfully obvious that the man didn’t exactly enjoy deep spiritual peace.
In his heyday, though, when Hogan strode out into the ring to the strains of his entrance song“Real American,” fans lost their minds cheering for him. The villains he fought, like the pro-Iran “Iron Sheik” or the supposedly Soviet wrestler “Nikolai Volkoff,” inspired surprisingly unironic hatred. When Volkoff (in reality the Croatian-born and fiercely anti-Communist Josip Nikolai Peruzovic) came into the ring singing the Soviet national anthem, fans were furious.
Reagan-era America was saturated with violent jingoism — and pop culture was no exception. Hollywood gave us a parade of muscle-bound movie murder machines like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting with fictional commies similar to Volkoff (or sometimes Middle Easterners to the the Iron Sheik).
The fantasies playing out on movie screens and wrestling rings were a dreamy remix of an all-too-real foreign policy in which the U.S. did things like invade the island nation of Grenada in 1983 on the grounds that Grenada’s left-wing government was building an airport, and that it was theoretically possible that this airport could one day be used by the Soviet Union to bomb us. (Really.) The Reagan administration was secretly funneling arms to Contra death squads in Nicaragua, who murdered nuns and priests during their insurgency against the country’s left-wing government, while Arnold Schwarzenegger was fighting with left-wing guerillas in the jungles of an unnamed Central American country at the beginning of the first “Predator” movie in 1987. The United States was backing Saddam Hussein’s bloody war against Iran while “Real American” Hulk Hogan was duking it out with the Iron Sheik.
You can learn a lot about a society from looking at the stories it tells itself. A generation later, a bestselling book of advice for aspiring screenwriters advised that the hero of a movie should do something like “save the cat” early in the film so audiences would root for them.
In an atmosphere of unhinged nationalistic fervor that marked the last decade of the Cold War, the only thing the Sly and Arnold types or the Hulkster needed to be for us to root for them was big, strong, violent and on our side.
You can learn a lot about a society from looking at the stories it tells itself.
And yet, even by the standards of the era, Hogan the man seems to have been remarkably free from redeeming qualities. In the late 1980s, when wrestler and future politician Jesse “the Body” Ventura made an attempt to form a union, WWE founder Vice McMahon caught wind of it and nipped it in the bud. Years later, it came out in court that Hogan was the one who ratted out his co-workers to the boss.
In the late 1990s, as Hogan’s original schtick was wearing thin, he did one of the most memorable heel turns in the history of wrestling, becoming “Hollywood Hulk Hogan” and joining with a team of villainous wrestlers who called themselves “the New World Order.” But even that only lasted for a few years.
The rest of his career was a cycle of “returns” that rarely lasted more than a couple of years. The fans turned against him hard after the N-word/sex tape fiasco and the lawsuit quietly funded by the far-right billionaire Thiel that put the pesky Gawker out of existence.
His last big public act came last summer, when he tore off his shirt at the Republican National Convention, screaming about “Trumpamania.” One of President Trump’s now defunct Atlantic City casinos hosted two Wrestlemanias during the Hulkamania 1980s, so perhaps the Hulkster’s invitation to the RNC shouldn’t have been surprising.
Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again” was lifted from Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president in 1980, and some of the worst things Trump has done harken back to the era of audiences cheering themselves hoarse for “Real Americans” beating up cartoonishly evil foreigners. Trump ordered as many airstrikes in his first five months in office as Joe Biden did in four long years, even fulfilling the long-time neoconservative dream of bombing Iran, and he’s overseen a brutal crackdown on immigrants. The president and members of his administration are working overtime to make Americans hating a foreign “other” cool again.
I have many fond memories of watching Hulk Hogan wrestle during my childhood, and some of the silly action movies of that era are still personal favorites. But one time through the bloodlusting 1980s was more than enough.
Ben Burgis is a political commentator and author. He has written articles for Jacobin and The Daily Beast.
The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a vote on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination, a spokesperson said late Wednesday, as two retiring Republicans on the panel dug in over President Donald Trump’s personal “anti-weaponization” deal with the government he runs.
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s decision to delay the committee vote that had been set for Thursday marks a setback for one of Trump’s highest-profile Cabinet nominees, at the hands of Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a pair of Republicans set to leave the chamber next year.
“Chairman Grassley works to set President Trump’s nominees up for success in committee, not failure. Senators Cornyn and Tillis want written assurances from the Department of Justice regarding the Trump-IRS settlement,” the committee spokesperson said.
Blanche’s nomination to permanently head the Department of Justice needs the support of either Cornyn or Tillis to make it out of the committee to a vote by the full Senate, assuming all Democrats remain opposed.
“Why don’t you call over the Department of Justice and tell them they have one hour and 50 minutes to get me what I asked for,” Cornyn told reporters Wednesday afternoon amid the hardening standoff over his demand that Blanche and the DOJ put in writing a commitment never to pursue the president’s prized “anti-weaponization” fund, and to clarify the terms of Trump’s personal deal with the Internal Revenue Service.
Tillis told MS NOW that the conversations were complicated by the need for the Justice Department to get “several parties” to agree on the language of the statement Cornyn and Tillis are seeking.
“What I’ve advised the chair, and I would assume Senator Cornyn said something similar, is that we’re not prepared to vote yes yet,” he added.
“The Department has been in regular communication with Committee members for weeks, and we look forward to continuing to work productively with Senators to address any concerns,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in response to the decision to postpone the committee vote.
Cornyn was set to meet with Blanche on Wednesday morning, but the meeting was called off after Blanche failed to meet the senator’s demand for written proposals to modify the controversial settlement agreement he brokered between Trump and the IRS. The Republican senator is set to leave Congress when his term ends in January after a bruising May primary loss to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Trump’s chosen candidate.
“Maybe John Cornyn’s upset with me because I didn’t endorse him,” Trump told reporters Wednesday afternoon in the Oval Office. “I don’t know what it is, but I haven’t heard that there’s a problem. I heard (Blanche) is going through quite nicely.”
Cornyn made clear to Blanche during his confirmation hearing that he will not get his support until he agrees to reopen and modify the settlement. Due to the committee’s narrow Republican majority, one GOP “no” vote is enough to sink Blanche’s nomination.
The senator has asked Blanche to provide proof that the proposed nearly $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund established as part of the deal between Trump and the IRS is formally dead, and he has also demanded Blanche narrow the tax audit immunity provisions the settlement afforded to Trump and his family.
Blanche has publicly stated that his department has dropped the fund, but he and the DOJ have dodged requests from Cornyn and a federal judge to put that in writing.
After announcing his meeting with Blanche would not take place Wednesday morning, Cornyn told reporters that changes from Blanche “in a modified release form” would be acceptable, but that “for some reason … they simply refuse to do it,” referring to the DOJ.
Shortly after the meeting was called off, a Justice Department official told MS NOW that the department “provided a written proposal to Senator Cornyn’s staff yesterday following ongoing discussion with both the Committee and the Senator’s office.”
Cornyn said that proposal was “not responsive” to his demands because it did not address the tax audit immunity provisions in the settlement, one of his key demands.
In May, Blanche signed an addendum as part of the deal that granted Trump, his family and his businesses immunity from pending IRS tax audits. That agreement, which has been decried by former IRS officials and legal experts as unlawful self-dealing, is being contested in federal court.
Cornyn noted that Blanche testified under oath that he could meet the request during his confirmation hearing.
“Maybe they think I’m just going to give up or you know, go along, but they’re mistaken,” Cornyn said when asked why he thinks the DOJ could be slow-walking his request.
Kevin Frey contributed to this report.
Sydney Carruth is a breaking news reporter covering national politics and policy for MS NOW. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at SydneyCarruth.46 or follow her work on X and Bluesky.
Mychael Schnell is a reporter for MS NOW.
Ebony Davis is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW based in Washington, D.C. She previously worked at BLN as a campaign reporter covering elections and politics.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived this week for his tour of Washington, he may have had a mission in mind.
Netanyahu needed to overcome his newly diminished stature and waning influence over his once close friend President Donald Trump as both leaders grapple with the unpopularity of a war they started together and is escaping their control.
His meeting at the White House with Trump on Tuesday, which was closed to the press, was the first face-to-face encounter between the two allies since the U.S. and Israel launched a joint attack against Iran on Feb. 28.
Trump gave him a muted welcome and afterwards simply described the meeting as “very good.” “Obviously, many important subjects were discussed,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Rather than an intimate one-on-one setting, the Oval Office was full of top U.S. officials — Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, and special envoy Steve Witkoff.
But Netanyahu continued the full court press on the Trump administration.
Over the course of two days, in addition to seeing Trump and attending Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral at the Capitol, Netanyahu also met separately with Vance, Hegseth, and Rubio, White House and Israeli officials confirmed to MS NOW.
The Israeli prime minister’s slate of meetings with key U.S. national security officials comes at a pivotal moment in the Iran conflict as tensions escalate in the region and Americans increasingly sour on the war. A recent Quinnipiac poll shows 60% of American voters opposing U.S. military action against Iran and 74% against sending U.S. ground troops into Iran.
Not only does Trump face pressure as Republicans face an uphill battle to retain congressional control in this fall’s midterms, Netanyahu’s fate as prime minister is at stake in Israel’s upcoming September elections – and he can’t afford to lose Trump’s favor.
The talks largely focused on what to do next as Iran continues to menace shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and retaliate against American bases in the region and launch attacks on Gulf allies.
According to a senior Israeli official who was granted anonymity to describe the closed-door meeting, President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu did not come to a final decision after discussing three paths forward: get a “good deal” focused on Iran’s nuclear program and enriched material, have no deal and instead continue the blockade and economic pressure, or take escalated military action.
But Netanyahu did not tell Trump what he should do – nor did he express a preference.
The senior Israeli official noted Netanyahu has not ruled out diplomacy – as long as it is coupled with “very strong pressures,” calling the push to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program “a contest of will and a contest of force.”
“There are ways of squeezing them and squeezing them and squeezing them and negotiating at the same time,” the official said.
Netanyahu did not present President Trump with new intelligence regarding the underground Iranian nuclear facility Pickaxe Mountain, per the senior Israeli official, noting the U.S. and Israel already are constantly sharing intelligence – and know where Iran’s highly enriched material is. “We don’t think it’s moved, and I think we have a pretty good grasp on that,” the official said.
During their meeting on Tuesday, Trump and Netanyahu discussed ways Israel and the U.S. can work together to stop Iran’s nuclear program and get the Strait of Hormuz open to maritime trade, the senior Israeli official said.
The two leaders also discussed a third goal: to continue to undermine the Iranian regime and “possibly create future conditions for a change in that area.” U.S. officials have backed away from pursuing paths that would overthrow the current leadership, but Netanyahu still believes that could happen.
“The chasm that has been created between the people and the regime is not about to be closed,” the senior Israeli official said of Netanyahu’s thinking.
Netanyahu advised Trump in February that Israeli intelligence indicated launching strikes against Iran would lead to the toppling of the Islamic Republic’s regime – and five months later, the slain ayatollah’s son retains power with a close circle of hardliners, calling into question the accuracy of Israel’s intelligence apparatus.
But the senior Israeli official said at the time, Netanyahu did not promise the Iranian people would take fate into their own hands following a coordinated attack. Rather, he chose his words carefully and said that an attack could create conditions to “advance the probability or the possibility that that would happen.”
The conditions needed for the Iranian regime to fall, “did not materialize,” the official told MS NOW, adding, “not for lack of insight, but for either operational failure or decisions that were made.”
Despite Netanyahu insisting Israel and the U.S. are on the same page, differences still remain: the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey and the Saudi nuclear arrangement did not come up during Wednesday’s White House meeting, according to a second Israeli official granted anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
Meanwhile, the conflict continues to spread, with an Iranian drone attacking a U.S. gas storage tanker off the coast of Egypt on Wednesday.
Trump indicated he would not let Iran’s latest action slide, telling reporters on Wednesday that the U.S. would retaliate against Iran even as he leaves room for diplomatic talks to resume.
“It’s our turn, and we’ll see if we get there with an agreement at some point,” Trump said. “But we’re going to hit them very hard.”
As for what it would take for Israel to join the U.S. strikes, the senior Israeli official said that if Israel is attacked by Iran, “We will respond very, very forcefully and very quickly. And I think Iran would make a great mistake.”
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
International rage over FIFA’s close ties to President Donald Trump has reached a fever pitch after soccer’s governing body announced a plan to sell a significant stake to an investor group led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law.
The president and his family have all but turned the White House into their personal piggy bank. And FIFA — which has its own sordid history of corruption — seems to have made itself a party to Trump’s self-enrichment under Gianni Infantino’s leadership, such as by paying for space inside Trump Tower in New York. (The organization has defended the office rental as a World Cup outpost.)
Soccer is seen by many as a unifying game. But Trump’s incorporation of FIFA into his political dynasty is threatening that idea.
FIFA has announced plans to sell a large minority stake in a new company that will run its main events, including the World Cup and Club World Cup, as part of a plan to triple the amount of development money it dishes out to its 211 member associations.
Under the proposals — which are subject to approval by a majority of those national associations and FIFA’s 37-member council — a new entity called FIFA Forward Enterprises (FFE) will take over all commercial operations, while FIFA remains the game’s global governing body and retains a majority stake in FFE.
A press release from FIFA confirmed the plans and said Thrive Eternal, which was launched by Joshua Kushner, is expected to lead the investment group that would control FIFA Forward Enterprise. FIFA did not clarify why Thrive Eternal was selected, and Kushner was already dabbling in sports.
But Trump basically has already given son-in-law Jared Kushner carte blanche to dictate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East while simultaneously hatching business plans in the region. (Jared Kushner has denied any conflicts of interest.)
Joshua Kushner reportedly has been a major donor to Democrats. But, predictably, the idea of another Kushner becoming financially entwined with the World Cup — the world’s most popular sporting event — and basically being dropped into a position of global significance isn’t going over well. Several other soccer governing bodies have expressed concerns, including Europe’s UEFA.
“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” UEFA said in a statement about The Athletic’s report, adding: “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially. None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell.”
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee also rebuked the plan, writing on X: “Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough — now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a multibillion-dollar deal with Jared Kushner’s brother to sell ownership stakes in the World Cup to private investors.”
FIFA, Donald Trump’s favorite corrupt racketeering enterprise in world sports, is now going directly into business with the Trump family!
Apparently the fake Peace Prize and giant lease with Trump Tower weren’t enough—now Infantino performs a kickback hat trick by pursuing a… https://t.co/knSZibuMea
— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) July 28, 2026
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has already launched an investigation into the FIFA leader’s relationship with the Trump administration, while dozens of European lawmakers — citing concerns about “potential breaches of political neutrality” — have called for the FIFA Ethics Committee to investigate Infantino. This new proposal seems unlikely to assuage those concerns.
But what it does seem likely to do is fuel global anger toward the U.S. — the kind that has been growing since Trump retook office.
And when you consider that, it’s truly remarkable how the same MAGA movement whose members whined for years about politics mixing with sports is now in lockstep with a president who seems dead-set on casting his shadow over every sports event he can.
This post on X basically sums up the foul stench around FIFA’s latest proposal.
Sepp Blatter was Infantino’s predecessor as FIFA president and oversaw the organization amid some of its many scandals. When heof all people, is warning about how Trump and Infantino’s relationship is “deeply damaging” soccer, it’s a sign of how far FIFA has descended into the gutter.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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