The midterm elections are just weeks away, but one fixture of the last major election season is noticeably harder to spot: the once-ubiquitous red Make America Great Again hat.
President Donald Trump will not be on the Nov. 3 ballot. But with control of Congress at stake, his ability to advance his agenda during his final two years in office is in the hands of voters.
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Yet some of the most recognizable symbols of Trump’s political movement appear to be fading from view.
To some observers, even Trump’s signature gold may be losing its luster.
“MAGA was kind of the ‘It’ cult around,” Trischa Goodnow, a professor of communication at Oregon State University who has studied political merchandise, told Straight Arrow. For some Americans, she said, “it was cool to be MAGA.”
But today, she said Trump’s support has fallen and with it, “that symbolism has taken a back seat.”
Trump stores shutter
Several independent stores devoted to Trump merchandise have closed this year, including at least two where their owners said that sales had dwindled.
Among the most prominent is a sprawling Trump “superstore” beside Interstate 40 near Knoxville, Tennessee, whose giant roadside signs were difficult for drivers to miss.
The store began advertising a going-out-of-business sale this summer, with merchandise marked down 50%.
Owner William “Bill” Hays said a lack of customers was behind the decision to close, according to reporting by Slate.
Former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, once one of Trump’s most visible and outspoken allies, took notice.
“I can’t remember the last time I saw someone wearing a maga hat or Trump shirt,” Greene wrote on X in August, responding to a photo of the Tennessee store’s going-out-of-business sign.
The Tennessee store closed after two other Trump-themed stores shut their doors in January: one in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, that had operated for six years, and another in Vernon, Connecticut.
Mike Domanico, owner of the Pennsylvania store, told The Associated Press that he was focusing on another business and was semi-retired.
But he also acknowledged that business had slowed, saying the store had “kind of run its course.” And with the president in his final term, Domanico added: “Trump’s not gonna be in another election, even though he’ll be part of it.”
There is no national database tracking MAGA and Trump merchandise sales, making a broader trend hard to pin down.
The Trump Organization, whose official retail website sells Trump-branded merchandise and which operates the flagship Trump Store in New York City, does not publicly disclose retail sales data and did not respond to Straight Arrow’s request for comment.
But store closures, discounts on Trump- and MAGA-branded items and anecdotal observations suggest the merchandise boom that helped define Trump as the country’s marketer-in-chief may be cooling.
More than just a hat?
Political swag has always had a life cycle, booming around conventions, rallies and elections and then cooling, Goodnow said. And with Trump absent from the November ballot and constitutionally barred from running for president again, the political calendar could explain some of the drop-off in demand.
But Goodnow said that “Trump merch was always a bit different.” The MAGA hat became an immediately recognizable emblem in American politics — a way for Trump supporters to identify one another and declare membership in a sweeping movement.
“Red MAGA hats were everywhere all through the first four years of his presidency,” she said. “It didn’t really ebb that much” after the election.
More than other political merch, Goodnow said, the hat became “a symbol of belonging to a group.”
Now, she said, the social value of displaying that allegiance may be changing.
Trump’s approval rating has fallen to a record low of 32%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published this week.
As Straight Arrow previously reported, many Republican candidates in next month’s midterms who happily accepted Trump’s endorsements during the primaries are now deleting or downplaying their ties to the president.
A review by Reuters, released Wednesday, found that two-thirds of Republican candidates in 62 competitive U.S. House and Senate races have broken with Trump on policy or played down their connections to him.
“Trump is so hugely unpopular right now,” Goodnow said. “I think some MAGA folks are feeling the pressure and aren’t quite so proud to show it anymore.”
For the faithful, the merchandise still matters
Still, those red hats, and the enthusiasm behind them, have hardly disappeared.
Outside the flagship Trump Store inside Trump Tower in Manhattan on Tuesday, Straight Arrow met Scott Kerr Jr., a pastor visiting from West Palm Beach, Florida, with his wife and son.
“I’m a big Trumpster,” Kerr said. “I like President Trump. I would agree with nearly everything that he’s done.”
Kerr had eaten a MAGA burger at Trump Grill and emerged from the store with a haul of swag: Trump coffee, Trump-branded chocolate “gold bars,” a Trump Tower magnet and the 2027 Trump calendar.
“You ought to see my house,” Kerr said. “It’s covered in Trump merchandise.”
For Kerr, these items feel deeply personal.
He described himself as a lifelong “presidential junkie” who could recite the presidents in order as a child. Living just miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, he said, makes him feel “the magnitude of history.”
“I love it,” he said of surrounding himself with Trump memorabilia.
While he spoke to Straight Arrow, his son rode up and down the famous gold escalator where Trump descended in 2015 to announce his presidential campaign.
“He’s a little Trumpster himself,” Kerr said of his son. “We’re very happy to visit here.”
For committed supporters like Kerr, MAGA merch may be losing some of its ubiquity, but not its meaning.
