On May 22, 1856, as most other lawmakers and guests had left the Senate floor for lunch, former Sen. Charles Sumner, R-Mass., stayed behind at his desk to finish some writing. Two days earlier, Sumner had finished a lengthy, two-day speech attacking the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed two years earlier.
The speech attacked the bill’s authors, including former Sen. Andrew Butler, D-S.C. Sumner said Butler had “chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows,” alluding to the practice of slavery. While Butler was angry, his relative, former Rep. Preston Brooks, D-S.C., was infuriated.
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Brooks walked into the Senate with two other congressmen, found Sumner and said, “Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.” As Sumner began to get out of his chair, Brooks began beating Sumner with his cane.
The attack seriously injured Sumner, who couldn’t return to the Senate for three years, but it made Brooks into a Southern folk hero, especially during the upcoming Civil War.
Flash forward to 2026, and the political brawls of the past seem to be back in style after Hunter Biden challenged President Donald Trump’s sons to a cage fight.
Wait, what?
Biden made the announcement in a video with Andrew Callaghan, a left-wing YouTuber and creator of Channel 5. He said he was coming to an event hosted by Channel 5 and said Callaghan had even suggested he do a cage fight with Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr.
“I think he’s trying to organize a cage match, me versus Eric and Don Jr.,” Biden said in the video. “I told him I’d do it — 100% in if he can pull it off. And if he can’t, I’m still coming.”
Callaghan told USA TODAY in an email that he believed Biden made the comments “in jest” but that he’s “more than happy to facilitate” the fight if Trump’s sons are “willing to engage Hunter in mutual combat.”
Neither Donald Trump Jr. nor Eric Trump has responded to the request at the time of publishing.
The Trump family has a long involvement in professional fighting that goes back decades. President Trump even participated in Wrestlemania 23, where he defeated WWE owner Vince McMahon.
The Trump family’s love of professional fighting has spilled over into their political lives, as the White House will host UFC Freedom 250 on the South Lawn. The event, scheduled for June 14, is meant to celebrate the country’s semiquincentennial and President Trump’s birthday.
Don Jr. has also entered the business side of the combat sport. In September, he signed on as a strategic advisor for the Mixed Martial Arts Group Limited, which aims to grow the sport.
When politics get a little too hot
Politics in the U.S. has been violent in the past, with some even celebrating the violence. After Brooks nearly killed Sumner in 1856, supporters began mailing him new canes after the one he used on Sumner broke into several bloodied pieces. People there during the fight even took pieces of the cane and made them into jewelry to commemorate the event.
“[The pieces of my cane] are begged for as sacred relics,” Brooks boasted at the time.
Sumner was so badly injured that his Senate seat sat empty for three years and became a political symbol for the anti-slavery movement. Southern newspapers justified the attack and said it could happen again. However, the attack strengthened the North.
But the caning of Sumner wasn’t the only famous instance of violent political disputes. In 1804, Vice President Aaron Burr challenged former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to a duel after Hamilton made negative remarks regarding Burr’s character. The duel killed Hamilton and ruined Burr’s political career after authorities charged him with murder. However, those charges never made it to trial, and Burr was able to finish his vice-presidential term.
The potential Biden v. Trump(s) cage match also comes with years of political baggage. In 2020, critics of former President Biden began attacking his son after people inside the Trump presidential campaign obtained a hard drive of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden.
None of the allegations led to any criminal charges, but it still allowed people like Don Jr. or Eric Trump to attack Hunter Biden and his father, who was running against President Trump. While the cage fight won’t involve guns, if it does happen, there will be some bad blood, which Hunter Biden has brought up in past interviews.
“These m———–s, they’re selling gold telephones and sneakers and $2 billion investments in golf courses, and selling tickets to the White House for investment into their meme coin,” Biden said in a previous interview with Callaghan.
He said that, if people believe “the worst possible thing that they’ve ever said about” him, it wouldn’t hold a light to what the Trump family is “openly doing, and nobody’s batting an eye.”
What can professional wrestling tell us about American politics?
As most people know, professional wrestling is staged, but that doesn’t stop fans from getting incredibly invested in the stories, almost like the fact that it’s fake doesn’t matter. This portrayal of staged wrestling is called “kayfabe.”
David S. Moon, a political researcher at the University of Bath, describes kayfabe as “the performance of staged and ‘faked’ events as actual and ‘spontaneous.’” He said fight promoters would use these staged fights to create interest in wrestlers by using “worked angles,” or scripted events, which could build successful programs between wrestlers.
But he said that as wrestling has evolved, so has kayfabe. Moon said audiences are in a “willing suspension of disbelief within which performers, promoters and the audience, all ‘keep kayfabe.’”
“Keeping kayfabe involves the active choice to participate in ‘performance conventions’ such as cheering the face and booing the heel,” Moon wrote. “In doing so, fans do not simply pretend to be fooled by the ‘game’; rather, in the new kayfabe, everyone is invested and involved in the playing of the game itself.”
Sharon Mazer is a scholar who studies professional wrestling and cultural politics and was cited in Moon’s research. During an interview with NPR, she said she believes American politics has become a form of kayfabe. Mazer said President Trump’s tariff fight last year is a great example of this. Mazer said the president acted like the winning wrestler who tossed his opponent into the ring, and the opponent “performed a win” for Trump and his supporters.
However, Mazer believes U.S. politics has moved beyond the concept.
“If everything is kayfabe now, then nothing is kayfabe. And what we lose is the security of that structure,” she told NPR. “The question is who’s the guy with the money who is setting up the show that we’re seeing and getting us to play along? Who’s the guy with the money who is commanding our performance in relation to what we’re seeing?”
