I've been reading about Kayfabe recently and its hard not to notice the similarities to the Trump campaign and American politics in general.

According to Wikipedia, "The origins of Kayfabe are a subject of broad speculation. Some believe Kayfabe originated as carny slang for “protecting the secrets of the business." A popular but unverified supposition found online is that the word originated from Pig Latin for “fake” (“ake-fay”) or the phrase “be fake” (“e-bay ake-fay”)."

There are two main actors in Kayfabe: the "face" and the "heel".
The face you root for. The heel you boo.
Kayfabe in WWE has developed to the point that faces and heels can change and even switch places during "the story", which could last days or even years, depending on how the audience reacts to the story.

In WWE Kayfabe, every match is a grudge match, most often for something stupid. It's never a case of two guys just doing a job, because that's boring and easy to believe. The whole point of Kayfabe is suspension of disbelief.

Last year, William P. Stodden, a professor of political science, wrote a paper titled Professional Wrestling and the Creation of Public Opinion.

Politics-by-Kayfabe is not crass cynicism: Like professional wrestling, the Kayfabe has become necessary for all interested participants. In wrestling, the Kayfabe provides a vehicle for fans to accept the spectacle as real. The business itself relies on the public buying into the story just as much as the public requires a story to buy into. The fans at a wrestling match are, in a sense, there to be taken. They want the drama, which so happens to be centered on men and women throwing each other around in the ring.
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Kayfabe is more or less an agreement that everyone, from the owner of the company on down to the little Hulkamaniacs, buys into. Everyone knows wrestling is scripted, but they pretend that it is real because it is both more profitable and more entertaining if we suspend disbelief.
In professional wrestling, Kayfabe is kept religiously. If a member of the talent breaks the agreed fantasy, they are often sanctioned, formally, by the company, because denying that the spectacle is real costs the company money and costs the fans enjoyment. In politics, Kayfabe is kept because it is important to politicians to gin up support among a crowd of folks whose lives may not be directly affected by the policy proposals of the politicians. If, for example, Donald Trump is talking about building a wall between the US and Mexico, he appeals to a segment of the population for whom immigration is important, though their lives may never interact directly with an immigrant on any level. It is important for Trump to never let on that he himself doesn't actually believe that a wall is financially or even physically possible. And it is in the interests of his supporters that he also never breaks this Kayfabe, because then they would have no reason to pay attention to the contest anymore. Further, it is important for the media who Trump's supporters pay attention to, to inform the population that what Trump is saying is straight out of the aether fiction, or to refuse to cover Trump, or to push him too hard to explain HOW he would build the wall, because then the supporters would have no reason to tune in to the channel and would select other media. So in this particular case, Kayfabe is kept by everyone from Trump, through the media, and down to his fans.
What is important then, and what is different from pro wrestling, is that the candidate-media-supporter axis functions to create reality for at least the supporters. When a trusted news outlet is playing along, it becomes easy for supporters who are, themselves, barely informed on various topics, to buy in to the point where the Kayfabe is subsumed beneath subjective interpretation. For the public, it really doesn't matter whether Trump will build a wall. Most of his supporters believe he will, and so for them, he REALLY will build the wall. And they begin to act as if the Kayfabe is real, and so it becomes real. This then turns into a mutually reinforcing feedback loop where supporters reward the spectacle, and the candidate continues to give them more spectacle, and all the while, for the news media, it no longer is a case of whether they will cover the spectacle. They will always cover the spectacle, because that is what the viewers want. And so on and so forth. Whether Trump is actually able to make good on his proposals really doesn't matter after a while. The actors in this scene have all forgotten that it was never real, by acting as if it were real all along.

In a rigged event like pro wresting, actual wresting skills are inconsequential. For instance, Hulk Hogan was not a good wrestler.
However, Hulk Hogan was good as "mic work" during match promos, and this is the only skill that really matters. Hogan would talk up his physical prowess (his “24-inch pythons,” referring to his biceps) and how he was going to crush his opponents in the ring.

Watching a Donald Trump speech, he does exactly the same thing! Trump talks about how he’s “killing” his opponents in the polls, belittles them — usually about their physical appearance — and touts how he’s going to dismantle them, only instead of doing this ahead of a match, Trump is talking about primary elections and caucuses.
This also gets to a bone of contention I have with some who have praised Trump for having sharp insight into voter attitudes. Nonsense....
Trump tries out lines, in order to get a reaction both from his immediate audience and from the media. If it doesn’t get a “pop” he abandons it, which is also what wrestlers do if the audience doesn’t engage with a line or saying. When they do react, the powers that be in the wrestling industry often rush a t-shirt or hat into production with the saying on them. Sort of like Trump and his trucker hats over the last few months.

Jesse Ventura turned his mic work skills into a governorship of Minnesota. Ronald Reagan turned his acting abilities into a presidency.
Neither of them knew much about the issues, and unfortunately, it didn't matter. (Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was a WWE Hall of Famer as well.)

Trump is both a reality TV star and a WWE wrestling celebrity. He knows even less about the issues than Ventura or Reagan, but his mic work is exceptional.

Putting this altogether, if Trump is using his Kayfabe skills (and I believe he is) then many of his misogynistic and xenophobic statement are just him giving the audience what it wants to hear. His audience is looking for fictional scapegoats for real, actual problems, and Trump is giving them what they want.
It's called pandering, and that's what politicians do.

With that in mind, the audience in the general election is different from the Republican primaries. It's an ironclad certainty that Trump message and persona is about to dramatically change in the coming months. It'll be a difficult change for Trump, but not one that is beyond his mic work skills.