A vendor sells Donald Trump 2024 election campaign memorabilia during the “Turning Point Action USA” conference on July 15, 2023 in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Giorgio Biella/AFP via Getty Images
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Giorgio Biella/AFP via Getty Images
Trump rallies come with a lot of merchandise, with vendors setting up the night before, sometimes preparing for the large crowds: hats, socks, flags, buttons and, especially, T-shirts.
I attend a lot of these gatherings and have become a bit obsessed with one particular shirt.
Miranda Barbee bought it hours before Trump’s rally on the beach in Wildwood, New Jersey, then held it up and read it aloud.
“I bought this shirt for $20. It says ‘Biden Sucks Kamala.’ What does ‘swallow’ mean? I didn’t even look at the front! This is so funny,” she said, turning the shirt inside out. “And on the back it says ‘Fuck Joe and the whores.'”
She and the friend who came with her laughed.
“Honestly, I didn’t know that was on the cover,” Barbie added, “but I think it’s really funny.”
The shirts have been prominently featured at recent rallies, with vendors specializing in them often standing just outside the entrances and exits, catching the eye of throngs of Trump fans.
These are not official campaign shirts. Reached for comment, a campaign spokesperson did not directly address the shirts, instead pointing to Biden’s official campaign shirt (slogan: “Free Wednesdays”), which mocks Donald Trump’s legal troubles.
Still, I wanted to know: Why? Why do these shirts exist, and who buys them? Sooner or later, I’d spent a lot of time thinking about it, so I wanted to know if there was something I could learn from this.
Hillary Clinton’s infamous Nutcracker
The “Hillary Nutcracker & Corkscrew Bill” boxed set of a nutcracker and bottle corkscrew was sold during the 2009 holiday season.
Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
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Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images
Sexism is nothing new in politics.
Consider America’s decades-long hatred for Hillary Clinton. Around the time of the 2008 presidential election, there was a t-shirt slogan that read “I wish Hillary had married OJ,” a reference to OJ Simpson, who famously was tried for the murder of his wife. He was acquitted.
And then there was the Hillary Clinton Nutcracker… which MSNBC’s Willie Geist gleefully described in 2007 as “a nut-cracking Hillary doll with serrated stainless steel thighs,” to which then-MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson responded, “I cross my legs every time she comes on TV,” and vowed to buy one.
Over the years, Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Sarah Palin have also been targets of degrading, often salacious merchandise.
But is the blatant lewdness of Trump’s T-shirts anything new? I asked Tim Miller, a Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jon Huntsman and Jeb Bush.
“It’s not that there weren’t guys standing outside the Republican National Convention in 2012 trying to peddle something that was derogatory towards Hillary — there were guys, but the intensity and the vulgarity was definitely on another level,” he said.
That crudeness was on display at Trump rallies from the start: As my colleague Don Gonyea reported in 2016, vendors then peddled shirts that read, “Hillary Sucks, But Not As Bad As Monica.”
Differences between political parties
“What’s different about Donald Trump is that he’s not particularly worried about his campaign being drawn into this kind of misogyny because, at least for now, it hasn’t hurt him that much,” explained Kelly Dittmar, research director at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
A vendor sells T-shirts at a Trump rally in Freeland, Michigan, on May 1, 2024.
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Daniel Kurtzleben/NPR
For one thing, the polls didn’t budge even after a jury found him civilly responsible for sexual abuse last year.
Dittmer added that part of what’s happening is partisan and reflects existing gender disparities.
“I think there’s growing internal scrutiny within the Democratic Party that says, ‘This is against our brand and it’s damaging to our most trusted constituency: women.'”
Moreover, she said, this type of language is often specifically directed at women of color, like Kamala Harris. The word “ho'” on the shirt definitely makes it a racial as well as gendered issue.
Meanwhile, Dittmer said the Republican base is made up largely of men.
“And of course,” she said, “the women who support us. [Republicans]they are more likely to say that it is just a joke.”
That was certainly true for Christina Kincaid, a voter who spoke to me shortly after buying the shirt at a rally in Freeland, Michigan.
“It’s just slang, that’s it,” she said. “It’s goofy and a bit pretentious, I get it, but it’s just a word.”
The idea that these are just words fits with Trump’s image as a “tell it like it is” anti-PC campaigner who has loudly insulted women, from Clinton to Megyn Kelly to Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar.
But the idea that words don’t matter all that much also reflects the reaction to the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, which Trump’s defenders downplayed as “locker room talk.”
Trickle-down incivility
Lina Shah, a political strategist, former Republican congressional aide, and Republican opponent of Trump, told me she thought the shirt was extremely important.
“Having this visibly shown to kids, even if it’s limited to a gathering, will ensure that someone who wears the shirt at a gathering won’t just wear it for a day,” she said. “This disrespectful attitude permeates the social fabric of our country.”
I asked Bob Berger, whom I met at the Freeland, Michigan, rally, about wearing the shirt outside of a rally.
“Are you worried that wearing it will upset someone?” I asked.
“no.”
“Do you think you’d be careful where you wore it? Like, around grandchildren?” I continued.
“Yeah, maybe around my grandchildren. Probably,” he replied.
Lina Shah’s observation that Trump’s rudeness spills over onto his supporters, whether that be through their attire or simply the nasty things they say about Biden and Harris, rings true.
“I wish Joe Biden would get arrested and I wish he wasn’t in office anymore. We’re still stuck with that bitch. I don’t want her either,” Barbie, a voter I met at the New Jersey rally, said of Harris.
I asked her, “As a young woman, do you feel humiliated by the use of that language, words like bitch?”
“I mean, she’s a nasty bitch,” she replied.
Plus, the T-shirt slogans, the expletives, Trump’s vulgar comments – all of this is a reflection of the divide in American politics, a huge partisan divide in attitudes towards gender.
“These gender differences may make it more acceptable, or less acceptable, to send out these types of messages without facing backlash or repression,” Rutgers’ Dittmer said.
Research has shown that Trump supporters in 2016, including women, were particularly likely to hold what political scientists call “hostile sexist” beliefs, and that these beliefs were more prevalent in ways that weren’t present in 2012. These “hostile sexist” beliefs include, for example, the idea that women are more likely to get angry.
Barbie, the voter who spoke to me at length about the shirts at the New Jersey rally, echoed some of those beliefs.
“I feel like feminism is a big topic these days, but at the same time, I feel like people are being overly sensitive and reacting to things they shouldn’t.”
It’s an old idea. But her new T-shirt? It represents something new.
