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Accessibility statementSkip to main content Democracy Dies in Darkness SubscribeSign in Advertisement Democracy Dies in Darkness stylePowerArts & EntertainmentsThe MediaFashionOf Interest stylePowerArts & EntertainmentsThe MediaFashionOf Interest POLITICS IS GETTING MORE RIDICULOUS. SO ARE THE T-SHIRTS. A speedy meme cycle has made political merch faster, stranger and more sarcastic than ever. 8 min 58 (Illustration by The Washington Post; Silver Lake T Shirts; Lingua Franca; Raygun; iStock) By Maura Judkis September 25, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT Etsy is a portal to an alternate reality, where an already weird election is, via its T-shirts, growing substantially weirder. In Etsyland, President Joe Biden is Joey Bizzle, surrounded by stacks of money and fighter jets, and former president Donald Trump is an AI-generated superhero tenderly cuddling the cats of Springfield, Ohio. (Never mind the fact that, in real life, he doesn’t like pets.) Subscribe for unlimited access to The Post You can cancel anytime. Subscribe Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, is hanging out on a New York stoop with Michelle Obama, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and a resurrected Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, under the words “Thug life,” which, in this case, is a compliment (even though describing three women of color by that word could also be an insult). And that’s all before you get to the tribute to Tim Walz spelled out in used tampons. Or the portraits of “Bulletproof” Trump and JD Vance shooting purple lasers out of their eyes. Or the numerous depictions of Trump in a pink suit, labeled as “Daddy” or “MILF.” (In this case, it stands for “Man I love felons.”) How did political T-shirts get so unhinged? It’s cheap, fast and easy to make T-shirts on e-commerce sites such as Etsy, Redbubble and TeePublic, and a low-risk side hustle because print-on-demand ensures that the shop owner doesn’t have to carry any inventory. AI image-generation sites and design programs such as Canva have democratized the design process, too. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement But the other explanation is psychological. T-shirts with messaging communicate not only our preferences but also how we would like to be perceived. If the apparel has gotten weirder, wilder, more caustic and nihilistic — then haven’t we, too? Of course, many political T-shirts, starting with the campaign-sanctioned official ones, are perfectly bland. There’s an abundance of plain Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance 2024 shirts, or shirts that utilize a singular image — say, Trump’s raised fist, post-assassination attempt No. 1, or a young, cool Harris — to make their point. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan has endured for the past eight years. Those types of straightforward shirts have been around ever since political T-shirts first became a thing. The oldest campaign T-shirt in the Smithsonian’s collection, according to National Museum of American History curator Claire Jerry, dates back to 1948: “Dew-it with Dewey,” with a portrait of Thomas Dewey, who lost to President Harry S. Truman. Political memorabilia has long followed fashion trends — walking canes with slogans were a hot item in the 1800s — so T-shirts and sweatshirts have become common political canvases since the 1960s. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement “When we look at the social media landscape, political merch is like the new yard sign,” says designer Aurora James, who created a T-shirt for the Harris campaign’s “Designers for Democracy” collection. “When Hailey Bieber puts on that shirt” — the model was photographed in James’s shirt in August — “that’s like, the same thing as her putting a lawn sign in the yard.” It may be even better, actually. Because many neighborhoods are filled with like-minded people, and yard signs are seen only by those who drive by, the odds of them changing anyone’s opinion are low. But a shirt has a stronger impact, says Heather Akou, an associate professor of fashion design who has studied political T-shirts at Indiana University Bloomington. “It demonstrates a stronger commitment to whatever cause they’re endorsing because it’s more intimate,” Akou says. Beyond the straightforward shirt, you’ll find campaign merch like James’s: An image or phrase that requires an additional level of interpretation. Her retro-inspired shirt says, “America is an idea” — a poetic turn of phrase from a Biden speech. The abundant meme-ry of this cycle fits into this category: any references to coconuts or brats, or couches or cats — the kind that belong to childless ladies, or the kind that certain politicians have falsely accused immigrants of eating. Some of these shirts have a short life span. Rachelle Hruska MacPherson is the founder of Lingua Franca, a company known for its nearly $400 sweaters with hand-embroidered cursive phrases, such as “Madame President” and the Harris quote “I’m speaking.” New York magazine called it “the official cashmere of the resistance.” MacPherson tries to find phrases that could last beyond just this campaign season. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement “Sometimes I’m like, okay, this is too meme for me. Like, is this going to be lasting?” she says. She doesn’t sell a coconut-tree shirt because she was on vacation the week everyone was making that joke, “and by the time I got back, I felt like the trend was over.” Share this articleShare It’s a challenge for Jerry, the Smithsonian curator, too. She and her colleagues collect political ephemera throughout the campaign. “We sort of see our job as to explain the past to people in the present, and help explain the present to people in the future,” she says. The more layers of meaning that a piece of merch takes on, the more difficult that can be. Take, for example, a shirt produced by the Trump campaign that riffs on a souvenir shirt from Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. If a museum curator were to put that in an exhibit 100 years from now, the wall text would have to explain the impact of Swift’s influence and aesthetic, the frenzy over her politics and the sour grapes from the Trump campaign that led to this extremely cringey, maybe copyright-violating shirt. (A representative for Swift did not respond to The Washington Post’s inquiry.) Advertisement Story continues below advertisement And then there are the shirts that are pure fantasy — essentially political fan fiction in visual form, unauthorized by campaigns. Some are meant to be silly nonsense, such as a shirt with a collage of Trump and Harris dancing below a disco ball on a burning floor, with Biden as a DJ behind a turntable. But some are serious: A growing category of shirts put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on equal billing with Trump and Vance, as if the party had three names on the ballot. And others expand that imaginary ticket to include Elon Musk and Tulsi Gabbard, standing between the words “American Justice League.” Sometimes a T-shirt is just a weird pastiche of projection and misunderstanding. Take a shirt that puts Trump in front of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” with the president’s face on the artist’s famous self-portrait with a bandaged ear, also wearing a MAGA hat. Two famous guys who suffered ear injuries? Sure. But drawing a parallel between Trump and Van Gogh seems less about substance — their ear injuries resulted for wildly different reasons — and more about the strained pun underneath the artwork: “Let’s Van Gogh Brandon.” T-shirts are not polls. But if you use sales trends to read the political tea leaves, T-shirt makers can offer a few observations. Harris shirts are, unsurprisingly, selling better that Biden shirts ever were. Advertisement Story continues below advertisement “This year has been wild,” says Mike Draper, the owner of Raygun, a Nebraska-based printing company that specializes in liberal messaging. “It went from nobody caring at all to everybody caring on enthusiastic levels” — and not just about Harris. “Walz almost is equal to Kamala in terms of merch sales, which didn’t happen with Obama when he added Biden.” On the other side, the shirts remain very Trump-focused. “In the Trump merchandise, there is no mention of anyone other than Trump,” says Akou, the fashion professor. “I mean, you don’t even really see that much mention of JD Vance as the VP” on the campaign’s official merch. (There are, however, plenty of pro-Harris, couch-joke shirts making fun of Vance.) Shirts that pick on liberals have “always been more popular than just a straightforward shirt that will support Trump,” says Peter Chi, who runs Silver Lake T-shirts, a shop that sells mostly pro-Trump shirts. Anti-Biden shirts accusing the president of senility are still popular, even though he is no longer in the race. But Chi has added a few pro-Harris shirts to his shop in the past two months, and they are selling well, he says. He’s an undecided voter who has previously voted for both parties. And he sees no problem with selling weird shirts to both sides. “Why would I lose out on that market?” he says. Share 58 Comments More Style stories on politics and power HAND CURATED * Politics is getting more ridiculous. So are the T-shirts. Earlier today Politics is getting more ridiculous. So are the T-shirts. 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