The irony of a billionaire posing as a populist hasn’t gone unnoticed, but Trump’s theatrical style has helped him cast himself as an outsider. During his first term, his two biggest adversaries, Mitt Romney and Robert Mueller, embodied the polish of an older class. Both men favored soft-shouldered tailoring and conservative foulard ties, knotted in the understated four-in-hand (many people in Trump’s cabinet favor the thicker Windsor knot). Mueller was loyal to Brooks Brothers, a detail recorded by his biographer, Garrett Graff. If Romney and Mueller represented the authority of the old establishment, Trump’s square-shouldered Brioni suits mark him as a warrior against it. When he vows to “drain the swamp,” he’s talking, in part, about ridding DC of Brooks Brothers bureaucrats.
The anti-establishment image Trump has cultivated is one way he’s been able to wield power. Many people in his base have taken that aesthetic and amplified its defiance. At the center of this spectacle is the fire-red MAGA hat, which is designed not to persuade but to provoke. (Recall Marjorie Taylor Greene shouting from the stands during Biden’s 2024 State of the Union, her red hat standing out in a room full of dark suits). At rallies, supporters often show up in military gear and T-shirts featuring Trump’s mug shot, expressing how they see legal prosecution as inseparable from political persecution. A master of merchandising, Trump built a licensing empire to help bankroll his campaigns, including gold cell phones and “Never Surrender” sneakers. Representative Troy Nehls of Texas, a former sheriff aligned with the party’s populist wing, has fully embraced this chaos. Not content with the uniform of a dark worsted suit, he occasionally pairs it with a “Never Surrender” T-shirt and glossy high-tops. He also owns a collection of neckties featuring an image of Trump’s face repeated in a crude, unbroken strip, like prize tickets unfurling from a Skee-Ball machine.
What this all adds up to is a modern Republican aesthetic, if it can be called one, that is less a coherent style than a cultural garage sale: a jumble inspired by memes and viral gimmickry. It draws not from the restrained codes of the moneyed but from the churn of pop culture and the glare of the digital age. The influence of Internet culture in politics is unmistakable—even official government accounts, such as that of the Department of Homeland Security, now post AI-generated memes designed for outrage. In place of polish and propriety, this aesthetic offers spectacle. At Trump rallies, the media personality Blake Marnell can be found in a two-piece “brick suit” with a matching tie, turning himself into a walking metaphor for the US-Mexico border wall. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth frequently appears in stars and stripes. In this context, the louder, gaudier, and more profane the display, the more it reads as authentic: Vulgarity becomes an offensive stand-in for populist credibility, a rejection of elitism, and a public performance of loyalty to Trump.