What’s in a baseball hat? These days, if it’s red, a whole lot of menace, subtext, and dark hidden history are lurking behind the seams.
Donald Trump’s innovatively-named webshop, Trump Store, on Thursday debuted a variation on the red ballcap he’s made ubiquitous over the past (oh my god) nine years: Instead of “Make America Great Again,” the white text on this next-gen dork-ass puffy dad hat reads “Trump 2028” in a text lockup big enough to make any graphic designer take a moment to collect themselves lest they give in to the aesthetic despair threatening to overtake them. For the low price of $50 (plus shipping), you can plaster your disregard for the U.S. Constitution, democracy, individual freedoms, and general human decency across your forehead—what a bargain! (The Trumpian attention to detail is apparent in the product listing: “Flag emroidery on side,” is a listed feature, typo and all.)
Of course, anyone in the market for this latest gritty reboot of fascist hats probably already has one or more flavors of MAGA hat to their name, but, hey, I’ve heard that variety is the spice of life.
The design is a reference to Trump’s recent teases of a 2028 run and a constitutional overhaul to allow him to do so, and a prop for the MAGA-ites to goad those who have been hoping that we’ll be rewarded for surviving these four years with the knowledge that we won’t ever have to put up with this guy making decisions that impact us again. You’d also think that being a convicted felon would have the same result, so fool me twice and all that. The listing has touch of plausible deniability by featuring a photo of Eric Trump serving as a noggin model—he’s a Trump too! This dingdong could (but should not) run!—but instantly dashes it with the copywriting that invites wearers to “rewrite the rules” with the hat. Ugh.
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Of course, this isn’t the first notable tweak on the MAGA hat design, like Elon Musk’s infamous “Dark MAGA” black-on-black topper, a version of which, with less Hot Topic-y font, is available in Trump’s store for $55. A recent revelation embroiders a new layer of cringe to the look: The Wall Street Journal revealed that it was gifted to Musk by none other than baby mama Ashley St. Clair. Remember her? The one whom he at one point offered $15 million plus a $100,000 monthly stipend in exchange for keeping the baby he fathered with her, Romulus, his 13th-born publicly known kid, a secret? (She rejected the offer.) The symbolism of Musk’s very public fashion statement’s origins in a personal life so lurid he needs to offer hush money to keep it quiet can’t be overlooked.
The first MAGA hat worn by Trump wasn’t red either: He donned a white version in July 2015 at a visit to the border in Laredo, Texas, shortly after announcing his candidacy. Former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski told CNN that the hats had been hanging around for a bit, but the debut was a matter of practicality: “Just for the sweat factor and other things, he chose to wear the hat.”
The campaign slogan it bore wasn’t an original one, though it will now be forever tied to Trump. Before him, the phrase was used by George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, and, most recently, Bill Clinton. Trump once even tried to claim that the latter endorsed him, using snippets of archival footage on social media. The “great again” Trump yearns for is a specific span of American history, from 1870 to 1913, a tariff-heavy time in which Stanford University’s Richard White told the AP nobody “except for the very rich—wanted to live in the Gilded Age economy.” Trump would also likely be into voter norms of the period: Women weren’t granted the right to vote until 1920, and despite the 15th Amendment’s ratification in 1870, Black men weren’t able to fully exercise their constitutional right to vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A Golden Age, indeed.
Hats have long been a signifier of affinity, whether it’s a ballcap showing that you’re on the same sports team or a fan of one, or any number of the pink knitted pussyhats donned by protestors during Trump’s first term, the titular headgear of the Red Hat Society’s free-spirited sisterhood, the coveted camouflage Harris/Walz hat, and beyond. Often, what’s on your head is an easy way to show what’s in your head.
There’s still room for Trump faithful who just don’t have a face for hats: The store also offers a red Trump 2028 shirt, another more-than-apt metaphor if you’re in the market for one. Consider that college athletes can have “redshirt” status, a loophole that allows student athletes to stretch their eligibility by spending a year on the team, but participating in an extremely limited capacity. This is akin to the argument Trump supporters have offered by pointing out that the Constitution doesn’t say anything about serving more than two non-consecutive terms. And then there’s the pop culture trope of Red Shirts, which originated with Star Trek and spread: The term refers to characters who are doomed to die en masse at the hands of the Big Bad, stemming from red uniform shirts eventual casualties often wore on board the Starship Enterprise. Make that death ideological, and you’ve got yourself a Trump supporter ballgame!
And then there’s the image of a “Trump 2032” hat Musk recently shared on social media, captioning it, “Think ahead!”
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Alternate idea: Let’s…not. It’s time to put a cap on this nonsense. Yes, even the beer koozie. There are other ways to insulate a beverage.
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