Trump 2.0 – A revealing message on a red hat

In the last week of August, US President Donald Trump sported for the first time a revised version of the ubiquitous red Make America Great Again baseball hat. The bold white lettering on the front says TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING.

The new hat, which leaves no doubt about how the American president thinks of himself, is not yet for sale on the website of the official Trump store but private sellers were quick to market the MAGA update for a range of prices, from $14 up.

Trump’s new hat slogan brings to mind the famous assertion “l’etat, c’est moi”, Louis XIV, the ‘Sun King’ who ruled France from 1634 to 1715, told parliament in Paris in 1655. The phrase translates as “I am the State” and reflects the monarch’s absolute power.

Trump’s Democratic critics say the president is dreaming of the power wielded by monarchs and cite his campaign to extend the power of the executive by weakening the other two pillars of the US government’s separation of powers, the legislative and the judicial.

The Democratic opposition has been slow in reacting to the new hat’s slogan, though it provides plenty of ammunition for mocking it, not least Trump’s often-repeated assertion during his campaign for the presidency that he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine in a day.

The first time Donald Trump assured the world that he could end Russia’s devastating all-out war on Ukraine in a day was on March 5, 2023, when he was running for re-election to a second term. “Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have the war settled. It will take no longer than one day,” he told a cheering crowd.

By the end of August, seven months into his second term, that was 891 days ago, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has ignored his American counterpart’s suggestions for a ceasefire to stop the enormous casualties on both sides.

A made-for-television summit between the two men in Alaska this month was followed by a sharp increase in Russian bombings.

Trump has long boasted of his good relations with Putin, whom he has called “dear Vlad” but they have made no dent in the Russian’s insistence that the “root causes” of the conflict must be addressed before any ceasefire. In essence, the root causes mean the existence of an independent pro-Western state bordering on Russia.

Though TRUMP WAS RIGHT ON EVERYTHING is open for debate on a long string of events, most of the president’s core supporters stand by him even though some of them are angered by his administration’s failure to provide full information on the “Epstein files” relating to the sex crimes of the late convicted paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

For those whose support has not been diminished, there is a vast array of merchandise to show their backing in public. The most widely displayed are red MAGA hats, but for those seeking variations, the Trump store offers 96 models in a range of colours, including green.

There are also T-shirts, tote bags, hoodies, pickleball paddles, coffee mugs, a variety of Trump ankle socks, tumblers with the logo of Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida home, needlepoint Trump coaster sets, and a newly arrived Trump dog bow tie.

According to campaign aides, the shop has sold more than two million MAGA hats since the beginning of 2023, when the campaign gathered steam. There are no figures on sales since Trump’s re-election, but there clearly is no shortage of merchandise other than red hats.

The hat slogan, MAGA, turned into a movement. Turning TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING into a catchy acronym appears to be as difficult as ending the Russia-Ukraine war. Or Israel’s assault on Gaza city.

Trump presided over a meeting of that conflict on August 27 that brought together his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his special envoy Steve Witkoff and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The White House was uncharacteristically tight-lipped about the meeting.

Witkoff told a television interviewer that the administration was putting together “a very comprehensive plan” for the region. No details were given. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has matched Putin in ignoring US suggestions, pressed on with a full-scale offensive to take over Gaza City, home to a million Palestinians.

Another Trump policy which clashes with the slogan on his hat is the imposition of tariffs on countries around the world, a move which upended the global trading system.

The highest import tariffs on a major US trading partner took effect on August 27 – 50 per cent on India, including 25 per cent to punish the world’s most populous country for purchasing oil from Russia. The Trump administration argues that those imports prop up the Russian economy and allow Putin to press on with his war of aggression.

However, just two days after the levies on India took effect, a federal court ruled that many of the tariffs were illegal because Trump lacked the authority to impose tariffs on nearly all imports to the United States.

The decision undercuts a core tenet of Trump’s economic agenda, but the judges allowed the tariffs to remain in force to allow the administration to take the case to the Supreme Court, probably in mid-October. The outcome of the court’s decision is uncertain.

What is certain is that America’s trade partners have been watching the tariff decisions with a mixture of bafflement, irritation and anger over Trump’s apparent assumption that his power has no limits.

The most vocal critic of the American president has been his Brazilian counterpart, Luis Inacio Lula de Silva, whose country faces as steep a tariff rate as India. In an interview with the US network CNN, he said:

“I’ve been saying publicly that we will use all the words that exist in the dictionary in trying to negotiate. That’s how the trade world works. What we cannot have is President Trump forgetting that he was elected to govern the US. He was not elected to be the emperor of the world.”