Welcome to the era of Trump Trad
Call it Trump Trad.
About the series
Carolina A. Miranda will spend a year examining how Donald Trump deploys visual culture to political ends.
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The aesthetics of a presidency might seem to matter little in comparison with actual policy. But aesthetics define the battle lines in culture wars and provide the basis upon which leaders build their cults of personality. Russia's Vladimir Putin gives off strongman vibes by releasing photos of himself shirtless on horseback. Nayib Bukele of El Salvador courts the tech bros with a slick social media presence and improbable talk of building a bitcoin city. Beyond his red MAGA baseball cap, Trump deploys a range of cultural signifiers to appeal to the motley alliance that put him in office: Christian nationalists, the manosphere, alt-righters and assorted nostalgists who seek to return the United States to some imagined past.
Art
The Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. (Saul Martinez for The Washington Post) The Supreme Court building. (Allison Robbert/The Washington Post) The Supreme Court building. (Allison Robbert/The Washington Post) President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Jan. 9. (Evan Vucci/AP)
The yearning for yesteryear can be found in Trump's taste in architecture, a conspicuous throwback to the 19th century, along with centuries prior. There is the opulent Mar-a-Lago, his estate and social club in Palm Beach, Florida. The century-old manse is stocked with baroque-style ceilings and oodles of Spanish tile, whose design is rooted in 1800s revival styles from the Mediterranean. But more indicative of Trump's taste is the New York City penthouse he built for himself: a golden, rococo mashup of baroque settees, Corinthian pilasters and ceiling murals depicting various Greek myths. (I am perpetually mystified by images of a large bronze statue of Eros and Psyche on a glass coffee table.) Critic Thomas de Monchaux once described it as 'a pocket Versailles' for 'a would-be Sun King' — 'a place for a short span of attention, a place without threat of stillness, a place where you don't spend a lot of time wondering whether something is right or wrong.'
These backward-looking aesthetic choices inform Trump's policymaking. In 2020, he signed an executive order to 'make federal buildings beautiful again' that slammed 20th-century movements such as modernism and brutalism, and mandated that federal buildings be conceived 'with particular regard for traditional and classical architecture' — like the neoclassical styles used in the design of the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court. The order wasn't in place long enough to have much of an effect. But on his first day back in office, Trump resuscitated his original order with another. As The Post's art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott noted, the new order limits the use of 'modernist idioms that made transparency the central virtue of their design, often using large walls of glass to signal the openness and access to government that were, until the age of Trump, widely seen as essential to a functioning democracy.'
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The architecture of Trump Trad instead offers a clutter of historical styles that leaves no room for new ways of thinking. It also comes with a strong whiff of White supremacy. The Nazis, too, vilified modernism and were inspired by neoclassical styles that drew from the Romans and the Greeks. In 2020, when Trump signed his first order, Pharos, an online publication run by an antiquities scholar at Vassar College, documented how White supremacists hailed the move. Under Trump's rules, neither the National Museum of the American Indian, with its undulating limestone facades, nor the National Museum of African American History and Culture, with its stepped, latticed tiers — icons of the National Mall — could be built.
Looks
As important as the places Trump inhabits are the aesthetics of the people who surround him — unsurprising given that his three wives have all worked as models. An Axios report published shortly after he began his first term in 2017 described a president who was less interested in finding qualified candidates than people who 'looked the part.' When he isn't in golf duds, Trump himself generally dons a dark suit and a red tie, the uniform of choice among Republican politicians. And though he is no paragon of style — Trump's big-shouldered, dubiously tailored ensembles are stuck in the '80s — he reportedly expects the men who work for him to sport suits, ties and well-groomed hair. Which could explain how the wildly underqualified yet perpetually pomaded Pete Hegseth became defense secretary.
Kimberly Guilfoyle
Lara Trump
Kristi Noem
Tiffany Trump
(The Washington Post; AFP)
Women are held to a different standard. Trump wanted the women who worked for him 'to dress like women,' Axios reported. And even women who worked in field offices 'felt pressure to wear dresses.' This speaks to Trump's rigid views of gender roles. The women in his orbit are often hyper feminine, generally seen in body-hugging sheaths and sporting 'Utah curls,' long, loose waves parted at the center. Last year, New York Times fashion critic Vanessa Friedman charted the physical transformation of Kristi L. Noem, South Dakota's Republican governor who is now homeland security secretary, as she climbed the ranks of the MAGA-sphere: Out went practical bobs, in came long hair and full lips. Online and in the tabloids, the look, also sported by the likes of Lara Trump and Kimberly Guilfoyle, has become known as 'Mar-a-Lago face' — which the Hollywood Reporter defined as 'makeup-caked, angular cheekbones, full-lipped, Fellini-esque exaggerations of the dolled-up Fox News anchorwoman look.'
Vivek Ramaswamy
Donald Trump
Pete Hegseth
Mike Pence
Tim Scott
Ron DeSantis
(The Washington Post)
In the world of Trump Trad, men are men and women are women, and they cosplay as extreme versions of their genders. This, of course, leaves no space for anyone who doesn't fit the binary. During his inaugural speech last month, Trump declared that 'there are only two genders: male and female' — an idea he later enforced with an executive order. Days later, the State Department had frozen passport applications with nonbinary gender markers, and going forward they will require transgender applicants to indicate their sex as the one assigned at birth. 'The order's scope,' reported Human Rights Watch, 'underscores the administration's intention to erase transgender people from public life and strip them of basic protections.'
The order itself is a work of aggressive masculine posturing. Titled 'Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,' it states that recognizing a range of gender identities is an 'attack' on women, 'depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being.' In this twisted gender drama, macho men protect fragile women — from everyone but themselves. Among countless other demeaning statements, Trump was famously caught on tape saying that he liked to grab women by 'the p---y.' More recently, Hegseth admitted to paying $50,000 to a woman who accused him of sexual assault, and The Post broke the news that a former White House aide was sent sexually explicit texts by members of Congress. What women really need is an executive order protecting them from powerful men.
The hypermasculine theatrics are a key part of the Trump Trad aesthetic. An official photographic portrait released before the inauguration features the president with a glowering, dramatically illuminated face, as though he were about to appear in a J.J. Abrams flick. The website for his digital meme coin opens with a highly idealized image of Trump raising a fist. Trump's admiring talk about big, tough guys once inspired a Vice News supercut. At the Republican National Convention in July, he appeared onstage with a large bandage on his ear and announced that the recent assassination attempt in Pennsylvania was 'too painful' to talk about — after which he not only talked about it but did so while standing before a set resembling the neoclassical White House framed by images of his bloody face.
Wrestling
Cartoonish virility is essential to a public persona shaped by the hallmarks of professional wrestling: grandstanding, combativeness and an outsize appearance. In Trump's case, this look is achieved with the application of garish pancake makeup and an architectural hairdo. Wrestling imbues Trump Trad with its testosterone swagger. During the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, retired wrestler Hulk Hogan, a featured speaker, ripped off his shirt while shouting, 'Let Trumpamania make America great again!' In some speeches, Trump will practically growl his lines. Following his inauguration ceremony, he staged a public rally at D.C.'s Capital One Arena, where he signed executive orders while seated at a desk planted amid an ocean of red carpet, then threw his pens into the audience as if he were John Cena after a bout.
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Trump, of course, has a deep connection to World Wrestling Entertainment. At a 2007 WrestleMania event, he helped shave the head of WWE chief Vince McMahon; six years later, Trump was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. McMahon's wife, Linda (who is separated from her husband), has been tapped by Trump to lead the Education Department. From the world of wrestling, Trump has drawn his exaggerated theatrics and learned the art of being a 'heel,' or villain, remorselessly trash-talking opponents. During the recent presidential campaign, he reposted a vulgar joke that alluded to Kamala Harris performing a sex act and described her as 'dumb' and 'stupid.' Amid a dispute with Colombian President Gustavo Petro over deportations, he posted a meme to Instagram showing an AI-generated image of himself standing before a sign that reads 'FAFO' — which stands for 'f--- around and find out.'
Cartoonish virility is essential to a public persona shaped by the hallmarks of professional wrestling.
Donald Trump lays on the mat after being knocked down by "Stone Cold" Steve Austin at WrestleMania 23 in Detroit on April 1, 2007. (Carlos Osorio/AP)
But perhaps the most important tenet that Trump has drawn from WWE is kayfabe, in which everyone involved in the spectacle (fans included) knows the outcome is predetermined, but nonetheless carries on as if it is are real. This state of unreality infuses the 'post-truth' nature of our politics, in which emotions matter more than facts. And it is something the U.S. press and public have struggled to reckon with, frequently attributing Trump's most inflammatory remarks to 'Trump being Trump,' as if he were playing a foulmouthed wrestler in the ring. This is why it was so stunning when Episcopal Bishop Marian Budde asked Trump to 'have mercy' on the vulnerable during a service at Washington National Cathedral last month. Budde broke through the kayfabe with an earnest plea.
Ultimately, Trump Trad is intended to distract. It's an ostentatious performance of 'traditional' values that disguises the cruelty underlying extreme ideas. When those ideas become policy, it is ordinary people who suffer — like the Colombian asylum seeker who broke down in tears at the U.S.-Mexico border when her appointment with Customs and Border Protection was canceled in the moments after Trump was sworn in. In wrestling, the crowd observes the action from the safety of the stands. In the arena of politics, it's only a matter of time before any of us might find ourselves knocked out on the mat.
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