The Next Trump....

The Next Donald Trumps

7 celebrities who’ve got what it takes to follow in the brazen billionaire’s footsteps in 2020.

By Luke O'Neil

It could take a generation to fully understand the changes Donald J. Trump has (or has not) wrought on the U.S. political system. But here’s one short-term lesson that the blond billionaire has drilled into our heads this election cycle: Today in the United States, having some celebrity, a lot of money, a degree of business success, a touch of fearlessness, and a hilarious shamelessness can make you a credible candidate for the presidency, no matter how uniquely unqualified you may be for the job.

It makes you wonder: Politics being nothing so much as a game of copycat, who might the next Trump-like presidential candidates be, perhaps gearing up as we speak up to throw their own branded slogan hats into the presidential ring?

Before 2016, a presidential run by any of these seven sports stars, CEOs and actors would have been laughable. But not in the post-Trump era.

Kanye West

It’s often said that you have to be an insane megalomaniac to want to run for president. To take a look at the vastness of a country’s woes and determine that you, more than anyone else, know how to fix them. But even in the delusions-of-grandeur big leagues, there are those, like Trump, who stand out. Tell me, then, if any of this sounds familiar: An extremely thin-skinned egotist who lashes out at the smallest slight with overwhelming force, largely in lengthy rants on Twitter. A man who’s perceived as a financial success but has had his share of financial trouble of late, and whose words become national news as soon as he speaks them, no matter how incomprehensible they are?

Consider quotes like: “I am the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh.”

Kanye West is just Trump with better production values. It certainly doesn’t hurt matters that the outspoken musician has dabbled in the political before—“George Bush doesn’t care about black people” was his introduction to much of the country—and that he has actually declared that he plans to run for the presidency in 2020. We already have a taste of what his pitch might sound like. “I hate politics. I’m not a politician at all,” he told Vanity Fair back in September. “I care about the truth, and I just care about human beings. I just want everyone to win, that’s all I can say, and I think we can.”

During an earlier era you wouldn’t have thought a pitch that vague and simple, and with so many “I”s in it, would stand a chance.

Tom Brady

What is there left to do for a man who quite literally has it all besides ascend to the most powerful office in the world? And who better than to pull from Trump’s playbook than his friends? Trump himself has actually credited Brady’s support for his big win in the Massachusetts primaries, and Brady has consistently called Trump a good friend, much to the chagrin of certain Patriots fans who shall remain nameless and who probably will never get over that. In September, when a Make America Great Again hat was spotted in the quarterback’s locker after a game, many in the media ran with it as an endorsement of Trump.

Brady equivocated on that as an official endorsement—like a true politician—and has said that he himself has no interest in running for office. But if he did, he certainly checks off a lot of the boxes on the Trumpian Candidate Scorecard. He’s married to a model, has a sketchy doctor on call, is already a regular on the cover of the New York Post, sometimes featuring references to his genitals—apparently fair game in our post-Trumpian hellscape—and has shown an ability to remain on top after a potentially image-ruining scandal. Trump has fashioned himself as a glamorous jet-setting playboy, but compared with Brady, he looks like a regular schlub in mustard-stained overalls. If it’s success, wealth, power and prestige without much substance behind it that the people want to vote for, it’d be hard to find a better candidate.

One knock against him, however, is that, even compared with the likes of Trump and Kanye, Brady may be the most hated man on this list. Sure, there’s no doubt he’d carry New England, and perhaps his home state of California, but can you really envision a Colts or Dolphins or Steelers fan getting behind him? Not to mention, as we saw during the whole deflategate mess, Brady seems really, really bad at lying. He’s going to have to work on that if he wants to be the next Trump.

Martha Stewart

Trump steaks. Trump water. Trump hotels. Trump University. Trump has shown that name recognition, above all, seems to appeal to voters. If there’s anyone who’s got her name affixed to more wares, useless, nonexistent and otherwise, than Trump, it’s Stewart. From paint, to housewares, to food, furniture, books, recipes and more, Stewart is the monolithic humanoid as status symbol that Trump dreams about when he dreams about Trump (which you have to think is every night). Trump is fond of calling himself a businessman, but, with apologies to Jay-Z, Stewart is a business, man.

Similarly, like Trump, she is a veteran of television, where she plays an idealized version of herself, and has even done time on roasts on Comedy Central. And I’m not saying Trump has ever done anything so egregious as commit securities fraud—but Stewart has shown herself to be a person who loves her money so much, that she’s willing to go to jail for it. You have to respect that type of loyalty. No doubt the Trump fans will.

Mark Cuban

“I do give Donald a lot of credit for changing the game,” Cuban, the entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks told CNBC in September, speaking on the suddenly lowered standards for what we look for in a presidential candidate. “Up until now, you had to be a perfect candidate. It’s like you couldn’t have a drink when you were growing up. And I think Donald changed that. He made it OK to be an imperfect candidate, and I think that’s a good thing.”

It’s certainly a good thing for Cuban. The billionaire, who also said he gets asked every day if he’d run for president, and that he would crush either Trump or Hillary Clinton were he to run, is probably the closest analogue to Trump among our potential contenders. He’s got the business acumen, the broad range of branding experience, from sports, to software, to entertainment —and a big fat mouth. His ongoing disputes with the NBA over issues both minor and significant, have garnered him well more than a million dollars in fines over the years. Like Trump, he’s also the star of a reality TV show in the form of "Shark Tank," and he’s even played the role of the president before, albeit in Sharknado 3, but it’s a start.

He’s also exhibited an ability to waver politically back and forth between either pole depending on the situation, having given money to Democrats and Republicans, and has expressed a broad spectrum of political opinions, leaning socially liberal, but financially conservative. It used to be that this kind of political slipperiness was a disadvantage. But the way things work now, you can pretty much say anything you want, as long as you say it with the bold conviction that only a billionaire celebrity can muster. As Trump has illustrated, apparently that’s no longer a bug in the system, it’s a feature.

James Woods

Another Twitter firebrand who’s edged incrementally off the cliff with age, Woods’ descent into political madness online has been either a horror show, or a delight to watch, depending on your perspective. Like Trump, the reliably villainous character actor is fond of women decades younger than he is, and has found a penchant for litigating insults—he’s currently embroiled in a lawsuit trying to unmask a Twitter user who called him a cocaine addict. Nonetheless, he has also shown he’s more than willing to dish them out, insulting gay people, immigrants and anyone he perceives as politically correct with his steady supply of invective. No one has been on the receiving end of Woods blunt insult-apparatus more than Obama however, whom he’s called a “true abomination” among many, many other things.

When it comes for running for president, he’s got the theatrics, and he’s got the free time. So dramatic has his political awakening been—“Buy more guns and learn how to use them” he tweeted—that he’s convinced he’ll never work in liberal Hollywood again. There’s just one hitch: Unlike Trump, who in all of his pantomiming machismo is at least plausibly likable, the odds of finding anyone to publicly admit any sort of fondness for the one-time relevant actor seems an insurmountable task.

Jenny McCarthy

Trump has shown us that the electorate is easily distracted by the pretty baubles of glamour and celebrity, so who better to take that concept to its next logical conclusion than a woman who spent much of her career captivating fans with her own considerable assets? Never mind a president with a pin-up wife—just skip the middleman.

McCarthy and Trump have a lot more in common than you might think at first. They’re both TV stars, despite being unable to play any roles beyond somehow less believable versions of themselves. More importantly, they both peddle ignorant beliefs without any reservations about what effect that ignorance will have on the people who take them seriously. For McCarthy’s part, that’s largely come from her tireless activism about the dangers of vaccines and their role in giving children autism, a claim that has no scientific support and that Trump has espoused as well. And both Trump and McCarthy have published multiple books, none of which anyone believes they wrote themselves.

If Trump’s success thus far has shown us anything, it’s that there’s a significant bloc of the voting public who long for the sturdy, reassuring leadership of a strongman. As we’ve seen in the past, sometimes that description can be taken literally: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura have proved that with biceps big enough you can flex your way onto the political stage with little to no prior job experience.

Hogan’s Trumpian bona fides don’t end with the powerful character he plays of course. Trump's name has become a synonym for success; Hogan has long been the embodiment of a certain kind of brute American masculinity and patriotism. For years, the professional wrestler would enter the ring to the strings of his theme song: “I am a real American, fight for the rights of every man.” Who can forget his constant avowal of the secrets to success: “The prayers, the training and the vitamins, brother.”

As for appealing to the Trump base, he was recently awarded $140 million in his legal battle with Gawker, who published a sex tape of Hogan without his permission, in what has already positioned him as a so-called champion against the evils of the media, something you can easily imagine Trump and his supporters rallying behind. As for the significant, let us say, racially insensitive part of the electorate, Hogan was caught on tape last year using the n-word, something for which he was fired from the WWE. Racial insensitivity, as you may have noticed, no longer seems to be a disqualifier.

The idea of running for office already seems to be on his radar. “I wanna be Trump’s running mate,” Hogan said recently to TMZ. “Did you hear that? Vice President Hogan!”