Elon Musk tips one of his two MAGA hat during White House cabinet meeting on April 30, 2025
The members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet sat behind red MAGA-style hats emblazoned with the inaccurate terminology “Gulf of America” during a televised White House meeting held on Wednesday.
While the hats are not available on Trump’s official online store as of the time of writing, he has frequently used his presidency to promote MAGA-branded merchandise. It is just one of many ways that Trump has used his publicly funded office to enrich himself.
The administration has tried to push the rebrand of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America” for months and has successfully convinced digital map providers like Google and Apple to display it. But others have resisted, like the Associated Press, which continues to describe the body of water by its historically accurate and globally recognized name. In response, Trump has banned the AP from covering White House events and has been involved in legal wrangling as he attacks freedom of the press.
As if the whole “Gulf of America” hat thing wasn’t absurd enough, billionaire Elon Musk also attended, wearing two different MAGA-style hats on his head. The attention-hungry move follows reports that he will soon step back from his role in steering the unpopular Trump White House.
Elon Musk is wearing two Trump caps on top of each other
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 30, 2025 at 5:45 PM
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Adding to the Cabinet meeting’s cult-like atmosphere, Trump opened the gathering by insisting they share a false reality. Lying, he claimed that it was not his fault that the nation's gross domestic product shrunk in the first quarter of 2025. Instead, he incorrectly blamed former President Joe Biden.
“That’s Biden. That’s not Trump,” Trump complained. “I was very against everything that Biden was doing in terms of the economy, destroying our country.”
In reality, the economy is suffering because of Trump’s chaotic tariff moves. His policies have increased the costs of goods and caused global economic uncertainty. The shrinking economy has virtually nothing to do with the former president.
When Trump took office, the U.S. economy was booming following policies that Biden put in place to recover from the COVID-19-fueled downturn under Trump.
The strange hats and the promotion of a false reality with Trump’s Cabinet of billionaires show evidence of a cult of self-deception. Trump and his team may try to sell a false version of reality to the public, where the Gulf of Mexico is renamed and tariffs are working out—but public opinion polling shows it isn’t working.
Trump is unpopular and so are his ideas, and a red hat isn’t going to make that go away.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
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