Donald Trump: And the July 4 cheap pop

Donald Trump, remember, is in the WWE Hall of Fame, and he seems to have learned something in his time hanging around Vince McMahon.

The July 4 spectacle on the National Mall was a clumsy effort to get a desperately needed cheap pop.

His approval ratings are in the tank. Any certainty when it comes to 2020 for him is certainty that he will lose, and, well, spectacularly.

The last ditch in last-ditch effort: wrap yourself up in the flag, and hope for the best.

The thinking being, if I surround myself with the military, come on, even liberals have to applaud me when I’m surrounded by the military.

Right?

This is where critics got it wrong with calling out the spectacle as being Trump wanting to project military might as a form of scaring people into voting for him.

No, that was what Dick Cheney did on behalf of Bush-Cheney heading into 2004.

Trump isn’t nearly that sophisticated.

This was him picking Bobby Lashley to represent him at WrestleMania against the heel Umaga.

For the civic-minded who aren’t up on their WWE history, this actually happened.

Trump, back at WrestleMania 23, in 2007, actually involved himself in a hair vs. hair match with McMahon, by proxy.

If Trump’s man, Lashley, were to win the match, then McMahon would have his head shaved. Similarly, if McMahon’s guy, Umaga, were to win, off with that one hair that Trump wraps around his head.

Lashley won, McMahon had his head shaved, but you knew that already, because Trump still has that one hair wrapping around his head.

Lashley, one of the top stars in WWE at the time, helped get Trump over, in wrestling parlance.

As did the reputation-repairing TV stint as NBC’s “Apprentice,” on which the bumbling Trump, he of the multiple bankruptcies, was presented as a successful tycoon, which he is decidedly not.

But as in the world of so-called reality TV, and the world of pro wrestling, it doesn’t matter what is actually true, but what you can make people believe.

Trump has been an awful president, for many reasons, not the least of which is what his administration has done to weaken America on the international stage.

Trumpism involves, among other things, cozying up to penny-ante dictators, giving Russian president Vladmir Putin a veto over U.S. foreign-policy actions, ripping up decades-old relationships with key Western allies.

But, you wrap yourself up in the flag, arrange for planes to fly over while you’re giving a speech about, among other things, how American forces in the Revolutionary War were able to achieve aerial superiority over the Brits, and, voila, the stink comes off.

That’s the thinking, anyway.

Cheap pop.

Column by Chris Graham