Despite its considerable galvanizing power, the MAGA movement—now entering its second decade—has yet to produce an especially hot fashion trend. That has just as much to do with what the zeitgeist represents as it does the vogueish shortcomings of its primary boosters: MAGAdom is garish, loud, and nonconformist—an advancement of something you could call “anti-taste.” Consider the MAGA hat, which is fire-engine red and emblazoned with an ugly serif font, making it hopelessly uncoordinated with anything else in the cultural wardrobe. Similarly, Mar-a-Lago makeup requires an ocean of foundation, flattening the faces of Trump scions and aides alike with an unsightly matte beige. There is also the case of the president’s preferred footwear, a leather Florsheim oxford, which Donald Trump has distributed to his various Cabinet members whether they fit them or not. This has led to photographs of Marco Rubio absolutely swimming in shoes that are clearly too big for him, like a child playing dress-up in Daddy’s closet.
It has been proven beyond a doubt that millions of Americans are willing to vote for people like J.D. Vance, Kristi Noem, and Matt Gaetz. But do they want to look like them? There, at least, I have my doubts. Liberals can sleep easy knowing conservatives have yet to make headway in the great aesthetic tug-of-war—at the end of the day, they’re forced to pit Kid Rock against Bad Bunny. At least, that’s what I always thought, until I found myself browsing Tucker Carlson’s merchandise and adding the coolest hat I’ve ever seen to my shopping cart.
Here it is, in all its glory: A navy-blue ballcap embroidered with NYC lettering, swapping out the C for a Soviet-style hammer and sickle.
The hat appeared on Carlson’s website in early March, and at first blush, it seemed like an attempt to roast New York City’s newly elected Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. (Elsewhere on the storefront, you can purchase a shirt that is more pointed in its partisanship. It reads, sarcastically, “Good Luck New York.”) Given Carlson’s cryptofascist leanings, I am left to assume that the hat has been manufactured for his most dogmatic fans: cranks, QAnon freaks, and provincial morons terrified of cities. And yet, after the podcaster’s newly minted fashion brand permeated the internet, something surprising happened. Carlson’s merchandise resonated with an unlikely audience. It turns out that for the American left, a commie-tinged NYC hat is the grail of the season.
“Who the fuck is designing Tucker Carlson’s merch,” posted a baffled user on X, embedding a slideshow of Carlson’s more colorful options. (Beyond the Soviet-themed New York catalog, the poster highlighted ballcaps scripted with captions like “I Heart Nicotine” and “Psyop Critic.”) The post quickly went viral, accumulating 15,000 likes, garnering a chorus of replies echoing the exact same point. Lefties might hate everything Tucker Carlson stands for, but his clothing line is tailor-made for the sartorial proclivities of coastal revolutionaries. As one respondent put it, “These go too hard, what the fuck.”
I think there are a couple of reasons why this is the case. For one, there’s always been a primal joy in donning the political trappings of conquered enemies. Mamdani, no matter what Carlson asserts, won his election, and therefore the podcaster’s feeble burn is easily interpolated into victor’s spoils. At the same time, Carlson has been making a concerted effort to put distance between himself and some of the more hawkish reactionaries within the Trump orbit—especially those who subscribe to the traditional bipartisan allegiances with Israel. This is why Carlson is selling coffee mugs printed with Godfather puppet strings hovering above an AIPAC logo, or a $35 trucker cap that announces “United States vs. Lindsey Graham,” or, even more plainly, a beanie stitched with the eternal conspiratorial shibboleth “Just Asking Questions.” Naturally, the political presumptions articulated by the inventory—with its pithy, internet-savvy lingo—are one of very few philosophical tendons connecting Carlson’s emergent post-MAGA contingency and the various disaffected leftists around the country who have no love lost for bloodthirsty neocons either. From that perspective, you do begin to wonder if this is all part of the plan. Did Carlson expect a handful of Mamdani fans to buy his merch out of pickled irony? If so, it brings perverse new meaning to that “Psyop Critic” hat. (I reached out to Carlson’s storefront for comment and didn’t receive a response.)
Those same leftists, of course, aren’t nearly as gullible as Carlson might think. They may be enthralled with the man’s graphic-design sensibilities, but cutting the podcaster a check is a bridge too far. “I need these to hit the thrift stores so I can buy secondhand, because as a socialist I can’t support,” said one TikTokker who uploaded a video of herself salivating over Carlson’s gear, stopping herself short of making a purchase. (It’s not hard to see why she’s hesitant. Carlson and progressives might share a mutual distaste for Trump’s Israel policy, but they are less aligned in the podcaster’s clammy nativism, and his acquiescent attitude toward hardcore antisemites like Nick Fuentes.) Nevertheless, the thirst for the Carlson ensemble remains strong. So strong that USA Today reported on a worker-owned fashion brand, called Means Workwear, that has begun to sell their own knockoff version of his merch—ensuring that New Yorkers can crown themselves in a Soviet-style city pride as ethically as possible. The promotion is titled “F*CK TUCKER CARLSON.” You guessed it, the C in “F*CK” is a hammer and sickle.
Of course, as a professional journalist, I am less bound by those questions of consumption than my fellow proletariats, which is why, last Monday, a cardboard box arrived at my doorstep from the Tucker Carlson Network. I bought two hats—the world-renowned NYC cap and a black snapback that smugly proclaims, “I Heart Conspiracies.” The goal was to wear both of them around my neighborhood, in central Brooklyn, to test my theory. Did Carlson indeed produce a clothing brand that is fully in line with the aesthetic signifiers of the Mamdani coalition? Would his hat meld with the lefty scenery in a way a MAGA cap could never? Would I get compliments? And if so, does that mean that for the first time in recent history, conservatism has produced something fashionable?
Well, what I can say is that after I posted an Instagram Story of myself in my apartment, shaded under the Soviet visor, an old friend of mine immediately responded looking to acquire a matching one for herself. “Love that hat!” she wrote. I broke the bad news to her. No, this wasn’t an Etsy find, nor was it distributed at a DSA meeting. Instead, dimpled in a tiny insignia on the back, are Tucker Carlson’s initials. Even worse, it retails for $35.
“I feel like I’ve been duped,” my friend responded, crestfallen. “I was like, Damn, I need that hat.”
To be clear, most of the interactions I had while wearing Carlson’s merch weren’t nearly this vivid or confrontational. I passed through the bars, restaurants, and subway stops around Brooklyn wearing contraband headwear, earning the occasional inquisitive glance and not much else. I wasn’t surprised. The core statute in the New York City social contract is to mind one’s own business, and a podcaster’s fashion statement, no matter how evocative, wasn’t going to break that spell. In fact, the feedback I did receive most often came from those who possessed a terminal digital fluency and could track back the cap to its original source. A few days ago, my wife took a walk through Prospect Park on a warm weekend morning, as the dewy euphoria of early spring settled in. She borrowed the Carlson ballcap, and—waiting in line at a dinky coffee stand nestled in the verdant fields—she caught the gaze of a woman in front of her.
“I love that hat,” the woman said. “And I know where it’s from.”
My wife immediately removed the cap from her wavy tumble of hair and stowed it in her bag—chilled to the bone from being perceived so sharply. It turns out that when wearing a Tucker Carlson hat, the worst-case scenario isn’t being clocked as a chic revolutionary or a closet reactionary. Instead, it is to interface with another human being—one who has spent far too much time online, awash in the infinite scroll—and is therefore brainsick enough to recognize a caustic meme in the wild.
And really, I think interactions like that might be Carlson’s ultimate goal. The terminus of MAGAdom—at least in its current incarnation—is coming into shape. Hopefully, Trump will only be president for three more years, and by the time he cedes the throne, a multitude of forces around the Republican Party will jostle for position to secure his heirship. That includes operators like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who envision a conservative doctrine whetted by Trumpism’s sharp edges but which nonetheless retains the facets of mainstream Republican ideology: an interventionist military, a devouring free market, and, as always, a charitable suite of tax cuts for high earners. But Carlson, along with a fleet of his fellow revanchists around the movement—Rep. Thomas Massie, the recently ejected Marjorie Taylor Greene—has begun to imagine something else entirely. The podcaster opines every day on his show on a pastoral United States, bound by racial purity, leering Christian moralism, and the divestment of imperial tendrils. It’s a conception that’s gained uncomfortable sway in the U.S. political crucible. (I mean, it’s the very reason J.D. Vance, with his uber-nationalist bona fides, is serving as vice president.)
If Carlson were ever going to make good on his long-rumored ambitions to run for president—if he ever wanted to amass a majoritarian tide to fit those ideals—he’d need to make inroads in some unlikely places. It’s hard for me to believe that a Carlson-branded NYC hat could ever amount to a serious overture to American leftists. But I do find myself wondering if, threaded through its pathological irony, his merch is meant to project the faintest signal of solidarity to the political refugees on the far end of the spectrum, in the same way Trump once recruited disgruntled Bernie voters.
The following evening, my wife and I hosted an afterparty for a dear friend’s engagement party. Our living room filled with the lubricated vibes of the deliriously happy and giddily drunk. And naturally, before long, that NYC hat started getting passed around. My loved ones posed for doofy Polaroids, pulling the hammer-and-sickle brim down past their eyes. I laughed at the absurdity of it all; how a Tucker Carlson hat could fit in perfectly at a Bushwick warehouse rave, how, absent of context, it possessed the capacity to scandalize our Carlson-listening uncles and fathers. It’s all a hilarious joke. You know, until it isn’t.