It was a real badge, back in the day. No word on how many were printed or what funds it raised, but, hey: different times. The campaign swag of the Sixties and Seventies has an innocence about it, an innocence that Donald J Trump’s campaign was never going to follow.
No sireee, as the pretty girls might have said. The Trump campaign, bored with the bright red Make America Great Again hats, has hit on a new piece of kit. Its genius is that it offends not only with its message but with its very presence on earth.
It’s a plastic straw. Or, to be more precise: 200,000 straws, followed as soon as possible by 100s of thousands more. The idea was hatched when a man named Brad Parscale couldn’t drink his iced tea. Mr Parscale is the campaign manager for the 2020 re-election bid. He was, according to RealClearPolitics, “eating a quick meal when his paper straw, an environmentally-friendly and government-mandated drinking instrument, became soggy, crimped, and useless”.
“I’m so over paper straws,” Parscale tweeted along with a picture and the hashtag “#LiberalProgress”.
I’m so over paper straws. #LiberalProgress
This is exactly what they would do to the economy as well. Squeeze it until it doesn’t work. pic.twitter.com/zKfiZiSHV5
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) July 18, 2019
Others followed and the Trump straw was born. Each comes embossed with “Trump” on the side, and at a price of $15 for 10 straws they make a tidy sum for the re-election campaign of the 45th president of the United States (almost half a million dollars at last count).
But, of course, the straws do so much more. They are instruments of culture war. They are weapons. They can raise the blood pressure of an enemy to dangerous levels without having to be removed from the cup. In this way, they are recyclable.
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