Interview with a MAGA Hat

Kenny the MAGA hat. Photo by Erin Scott/Reuters.

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Let’s just say that I attended the Great American State Fair last week in Washington DC. On the north end of the National Mall, behind the American History Museum Food Kiosk (“Chili and cheese hot dog combo $16.15”), I came upon a dirty MAGA hat lying on the ground.

There it was. The headwear that had spread like a fungus throughout the US. The symbol of everything that was wrong—or crazily giddy—about America. The hat that divided the nation. I’d never seen one up close. Wow. And then I thought, rather than mock the failures of this Fair like other journalists—the lightning storms, the power outages, the concert cancellations, the flimsy booths, the scenery that fell down and nearly injured rehearsing dancers—maybe I should focus on this hat. I should do an interview with it! I picked it up and took it back to my hotel room. I sat in a chair, set the hat on a table, and pushed the record button.

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Can you say your name, and what you are?

My name is Kenny. I’m a six-panel cap. Fully adjustable, wool/acrylic blend.

Can I just say, you kind of look like shit.

Well, I’m old. I was made in 2020.

So where did life begin for you?

In Hat Town, also known as Ligezhuang, part of Jiaozhou in China’s eastern Shandong province. The whole town is hat factories. They make one-third of the world’s baseball caps, about 500 million a year, and we get exported all over the world. Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa. One large factory can make 40,000 hats a month.

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Hat production line in Jiaozhou. Photo by Wan Lei/Chinanews.com.

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We even have a Ligezhuang Hat Manufacturing Association. Here’s their slogan: “Our Core Competitiveness Isn’t Low Cost, But ‘Comprehensive Value For Money’ And ‘Absolute Reliability.’” I don’t even know what that means.

So out of all these factories, Kenny, which one was yours?

My factory was owned by Brother Wang. There were lots of us in Wang’s operation. Nice people. We all started as blanks. You have no idea what your slogan is gonna be. I was made of red cloth, so I could have been anything. Cincinnati Reds, St. Louis Cardinals, the Phillies, International Harvester, Tabasco hot sauce. And then there’s the dumb slogans: Say hello to my little friend, Who farted?, I’m with stupid, Nuke the whales. People place such meaning on these things, like it gives them some extra cleverness or personality. But they’re just words. We’re just hats. Mrs. Yee does most of the stitching, she knows English better than the others.

I found out later that in 2024 Mrs. Yee took her lunch break, and someone else did the stitching, so the Elon Musk version of the MAGA hat ended up with the typo, “Make American Great Agein.” I wasn’t there but I heard about it. Other factories copied the typo, not knowing there was a mistake, and I guess it’s a collector’s item now. How about that!

Elon Musk MAGA hat, Gothic style with typo.

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But how did you become a full-on MAGA hat?

Brother Wang saw the MAGA hats were selling like crazy. So that’s why they made me. Mrs. Yee stitched me up with the white lettering. Thousands of us were packed in poly bags, surrounded by bubble wrap, and stacked in cardboard boxes. Those were loaded onto a freight plane and shipped DHL to the States.

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Factory workers load caps for shipping.

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On the trip over, in the airplane, the gossip flies. It takes three to seven days, so there’s time to kill. We talk, and we learn some of our history. Trucker and snapback hat styles date back to the ‘70s, so we’re nothing new. The MAGA idea Trump claims he came up with in 2015, but it really dates back to Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. And Bill Clinton also used the phrase in his 1992 speeches. So yeah, Trump stole it and started pushing it. Stanford gave him an award, the “2016 Symbol of the Year.”

So Kenny, where did you end up?

We landed and were unloaded into a warehouse near an airport. I don’t know where this was, but it was hot. And then a van picked us up and took us to West Virginia and I was set up at a kiosk.

What, like an outdoor table?

It was at a Trump rally. He wasn’t president at the time. Even though the state always votes red, he does rallies there. Makes him feel better. And we sell a lot of hats.

Did you see other hats that weren’t made in China?

There was some other official MAGA hats, made in New Jersey and California. They acted kind of snooty, very high-priced, but I was only $14.99 and a guy named Earl bought me.

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MAGA hat made in China, wool/acrylic blend.

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So people who buy these caps don’t really care where they’re made?

Most don’t care, whatever is cheapest. If you buy one from Trump’s store, it’s 55 bucks, which is ridiculous. Earl wore me around town for awhile, we did one or two of those boat rallies, where every yahoo for 100 miles around brings a boat and dresses it up with Trump flags and takes pictures of each other.

How did you end up in DC?

I was part of the January 6 insurrection. They called it a rally but we knew. It was pretty obvious. Earl got all excited and accidentally gassed himself with bear spray and lost his hat, and I ended up on the ground for awhile and fell into a sewer drain.

A mama rat found me, and she was pregnant, so she dragged me back to, I guess it was her nest. She positioned me just right, there in the dark, and gave birth to a litter of eight babies inside me. So I sat there for 28 days. That’s a long time. With these little purple rat babies. They’re so small when they’re young.

So you’ve been living in a sewer since 2021?

Well, the rat babies grew up, I never saw them again. The snows and rains flushed me out this spring, and I’ve been kicking around DC ever since. That’s when you found me.

Kenny, if you didn’t have this slogan, your life might have turned out much differently.

Yeah. I could have been one of those fun hats, like “Shit happens when you party naked.” A bachelorette party in Vegas. The limo rides, the music, all the lights. Believe me, I’ve thought about it.

In the first fourteen months of President Donald Trump’s second term, the Trump Store launched at least 622 products, costing nearly $43,000 all together, to profit off the presidency…Trump’s last released financial records show that in 2024, his merch store brought in approximately $8.8 million. —Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), April 2026.

Trump Media shares are down 89% from their peak. World Liberty tokens have fallen 82%. The president’s memecoin is off 98%. Melania’s version has dropped 99%. Shares of American Bitcoin are down 95%. The Trumps, after cashing out $1.9 billion, are still up $3.1 billion overall, according to Forbes calculations. Their supporters are down an estimated $7 billion. —Forbes, July 2026