Are you ready for the worst presidential campaign in history? Clearly, he is. Candidate for a return to the White House in 2025 and favorite in the polls, Donald Trump has already begun his work of undermining and poisoning the campaign. A few days ago, he visited Des Moines, the capital of Iowa, to meet young fans, debunk Joe Biden, promise the world and even swipe a red hat.
Let's talk about them. For the past eight years, the former president has been selling baseball caps emblazoned with the slogan "Make America Great Again," invented by Ronald Reagan in 1980. The figures are questionable, but inevitably staggering: The Trump camp claims to have sold more than two million of them. In his book Breaking History: A White House Memoir, Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner even explained that, during the victorious 2016 campaign, these sales alone brought in $80,000 a day.
Despite the theft of his cap, this young supporter of the Republican candidate was still wearing the sartorial evidence of his patriotism. First, of course, there was the pair of unmistakably American jeans. Yes, they're Levi's. The brown jacron label, introduced by the Californian firm in 1886 to mark its jeans and distinguish them from the counterfeits that were already circulating among the pioneers, left no doubt on the subject.
If this man's jeans are identifiable from the back, his shirt is no less so. What's that all about? Oxford cloth, button-down. Marketed as early as 1900 by the Brooks Brothers brand, these shirts with their characteristic button-down collars – copied from old polo players' shirts – are cut from thick Oxford cotton. Over the years, they have become such an institution in the United States that their acronym is enough to describe them: OCBD (Oxford Cloth Button Down).
Finally, how can we fail to mention the mass of blond hair in the image? In fact, if Donald Trump remains as dubiously blond as ever, this fan is quite spectacularly so. The coincidence is notable, since only 2% of the human population is blond. From this perspective, it's hard not to see that the American election marks the prospect of the return of a tall blond.
Translation of an original article published in French on lemonde.fr; the publisher may only be liable for the French version.