It was only a matter of time: The official Trump store has just released a “Trump 2028” hat, and it proves that the President’s comments about running an unconstitutional third term were not an empty threat.
The new hat appeared online today on President Trump’s merch store. It retails for $50 and comes in classic MAGA red and white, with some added stars in a large sans serif font that takes up nearly the entire front face of the hat. The hat is yet another example of how Trump uses merch to walk an ultra fine line between joke and reality, leveraging products to both provoke his political opponents and normalize his dodgy behavior.
By this point, Trump’s merch strategy has worked to desensitize many Americans to his more extreme comments—but if Trump’s past merch is anything to go by, it’s clear that while his messaging may seem lighthearted, it would be a mistake to take the “Trump 2028” hat lightly.
Why Trump merch matters
Merch has always been a crucial mode of messaging for Trump. In 2016, the bright red “Make America Great Again” trucker hat was practically unavoidable. According to a report from Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the hats were pulling in up to $80,000 a day during the campaign. But when the red MAGA hat first debuted in 2015, no one was taking it seriously.
As Fast Company has previously reported, the New York Times style section disregarded it as “an ironic summer accessory” in September 2015. When the Trump campaign revealed that it had spent $3.2 million on the hats, Esquire wrote that they “may well go down as the Trump campaign’s only lasting contribution to the political history of the Republic.”
Today, though, it would be difficult to find anyone who would argue that the MAGA hat is merely ironic. It’s become a universally recognized symbol of Trump’s ideology—a form of public resistance for some, and, for many others, a propaganda-laden shorthand for intolerance.
Since 2016, Trump’s merch strategy has become a bit more layered, but no less on the nose. His store has expanded with dozens of hat options, including one recent iteration which read, “Trump was right about everything.” During the 2024 campaign, he turned a visit to a McDonald’s into a T-shirt. The merch even when meta, when a surrealist hat design featured a tiny image of a MAGA hat printed onto another hat.
And, in December of this year, Trump also turned the suit that he wore during his mugshot (taken before he was found guilty on 34 felony counts) into purchasable NFTs, as well as a $25 mug and $36 shirt. He further glorified the mugshot on rally posters and even in his official presidential portrait, which now hangs in the White House.
Products like the surrealist hat-on-a-hat might seem like offhand jokes, but Trump’s merch strategy is clearly also a powerful political tool. The endless stream of products keeps Trump’s message front and center both IRL and online. And, by merch-ifying moments like Trump’s mugshot, his campaign reframes, and even legitimizes potentially damaging moments to followers while desensitizing everyone else.
Trump’s plan to hard-launch a potential third term
Trump has been talking about running for a third term for months, initially by floating the idea as what seemed like a joke.
At a speech before the Congressional Institute in January, the President said, “I think I’m not allowed to run again. I’m not sure. Am I allowed to run again, Mike [Johnson]? I better not get you involved in that argument.”
Since then, he’s repeatedly doubled down on the idea. In late March, Trump told Meet the Press host Kristen Welker that “a lot of people” wanted him to serve a third term, and that there were “methods” to skirt around the two-term limit established in the 22nd Amendment of the Constitution. He even added that he was “not joking” about the idea, for good measure.
Per the 22nd Amendment, “no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”—and it’s unclear to experts what “methods” Trump has in mind to get around the unambiguous limit.
But what is clear, based on the President’s new merch launch, is that he’s now outfitting his own followers in his campaign for an illegal third term. And if there’s anything we should’ve learned from Trump’s past merch strategy, it’s that we need to take him at his hat.