Tolkkinen: Trump and The Hat

The first time I noticed that Trump’s red Make America Great Again hat had come into vogue was at the Lake Region Threshers Show in Otter Tail County, locally known as the Dalton threshing bee. (If you’ve never been, you should go. It’s amazing.)

It was 2016, and as my small son and I walked around the grounds, admiring the huge century-old tractors and getting a free ride on the steam engine, red hats were everywhere. One man was wearing one that said, “Make Dalton Great Again,” which made me chuckle, imagining this small farming community as a long-ago mighty empire.

I always thought Trump looked like a goof wearing that hat. I mean, who wore a feed-style cap with a suit? But all around me, men were wearing them like they’d finally found a club they actually wanted to join.

Skeptics mocked The Hat. They laughed at the idea that a chauffer-driven New York billionaire with a gilded penthouse, who’d never shoveled manure or speared pike from a darkhouse or driven a semitruck, could think that a red cap would endear him to men who had done all those things. They laughed that parts of his hats were evidently made outside the United States, or that they were made in the U.S. by people he has disparaged.

Many a lesser politician would have slunk away from The Hat and the mockery it engendered. It would have faded into the background as a tried-and-failed campaign prop shunted aside in favor of more traditional apparel like buttons or T-shirts.

Not Trump. He did as he always does in the face of criticism. He doubled down. The Hat took on the air of defiance, a symbol of a man who never backed down, a man who never apologized. A man who made his own atmosphere, critics be damned, using their own momentum against them. Hat sales went through the roof. There were knockoffs and parodies. Finally, the people had a politician who didn’t scurry off at the faintest hint of criticism, but who stood his ground, stood boldly and took it all, mockery and adoration alike. The hats linked the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the barely-making-it, the city slicker and the cowboy.

The mockery continued. He pronounced the books of the Bible “One Corinthians” and “Two Corinthians” instead of “First Corinthians” and “Second Corinthians.” Haw haw! Some Christian. (Never mind that “One Corinthians” and “Two Corinthians” was exactly the pronunciation I and many other kids learned in Sunday School.) He didn’t have a 2016 campaign office in New Jersey. He spelled coffee “covfefe” in a Tweet. Haw haw. A stable genius, all right!

But he continued to gain in the polls, with politicians falling over themselves to support him. And as he kept winning, his critics began to look like wolves unable to take down a majestic stag. They looked like loser wolves.

Even after Trump lost the 2020 election, he sucked all the oxygen out of America by claiming it was stolen. Over and over. For four years, grabbing headlines, shading out the real president, gaining strength even when the headlines were negative. Crying witch hunt when he was indicted and convicted. Fueled by millions of Americans who believed him.

Nobody laughs at Trump anymore. Levity has given way to gravity.

So we have the Trump of today, heading back to the White House, still doubling down. Insisting that Matt Gaetz become attorney general despite serious allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use.

Supporting former Fox TV host and Minnesota native Pete Hegseth, a war veteran with no global military leadership experience, to become Defense Department chief even as news broke that Hegseth had paid off a woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017. Hegseth was also blocked from serving at President Biden’s inauguration with his National Guard unit because one of his tattoos marked him as a possible inside security threat.

If pundits had waxed poetic on how The Hat was a genius marketing maneuver, if they had clapped Trump on the back and applauded his savvy, would that have shifted a calculus that depended so much on opposition? If they had given grace for “One Corinthians” and “covfefe,” and focused on his truly abhorrent words, would that have taken the wind out of his sails?

I suspect Trump would have adapted yet again, shape shifted and fed on the positive energy as he feeds on negative. Thriving in environments that would shrivel mere mortals.

“They’re not after me, they’re after you,” he has told his supporters. And they believe him. They identify with him. Waving their Trump flags, wearing their golden Trump sneakers, holding their Trump Bibles. And still sporting that red hat.