They’re all distractions to take attention away from The Epstein Files.
I’m surprised they aren’t selling “Lets Start a War with Venezuela” T-shirts.
Hey, don’t give anyone any ideas!
On the Daily Kos Comics page today:
From tonight’s Meidas “Today in Politics: November 6, 2025.” DNC Chair Ken Martin: “Think about the 13 seats that we won in the VA House. 7 of those 313 seats that we won haven’t been won by a Democrat in 40 years. This is how deep and wide Tuesday’s victory was. What happened throughout the country was a landslide for Democrats. The foot is on the gas, no brakes. We’re doing this all the way through November of 2028.”
I get around. This summer and fall I have driven through a lot of the reddest areas of the northern Rocky Mountain and Great Plains states and the Trumpiest parts of the inland northwest. North Dakota, Montana the hard way, Idaho, eastern Oregon and Washington. This time last year, the Trump signs and banners, the MAGA hats and bumper stickers, were everywhere. After the 2016 election, the signs stayed up. This time? Crickets.
In August, my brother and I drove from North Dakota across rural Montana and north Idaho on State Highway 200. We saw five or six Trump signs the whole 700 miles. This fall we did a repeat of last year’s elk hunt in the Wallowa Mts of eastern Oregon. I can’t say I saw a single Trump sign this year. Last year, before the election, the signs and banners flags and stickers and red hats were everywhere; this year, crickets again. We had breakfast in the Cheyenne Cafe in Joseph (good food!) and didn’t hear a WORD spoken in the place about politics or how great Trump was doing. It’s like people have made up their own minds but are afraid to express themselves, afraid of their friends and neighbors. Nobody is talking, but they have all taken down their yard signs.
Trump and his henchmen/women have lost their base, a lot of it.
We had a guy nearby who house was festooned with all sots of Trump signs. It was a landmark. Now he has nothing out there. I’ve noticed that a lot of ostentatious Trump signs are gone. A few remain – it’s not a clean sweep – but there’s definitely less out there
Maybe oranges are out of season?
( Maybe they arrested and chased away all the workers there were to pick them? )
The resorts aren’t open yet, but when I look through the online offerings at Dilligaf (which is at multiple resorts) I see that they have a shirt with Trump giving double bird.
The shirt reads “We won”.
I don’t know how old this shirt is. It might be referring to the election. If it’s new, it’s asserting tha we won in Iran, which we really haven’t even done yet. But it’s the only Trump-emblazoned thing I could find on the site.
“We’re going to win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please, it’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore.’”
Questions I have for tourist vendors.
What share of your wares used to be political? I see there’s less now. Do you remember when you started taking a lot of political stuff off the shelves? (I’m making this open-ended so that the vendor can volunteer what kind of political stuff he has in mind.)
How long do you wait for a dip in sales before pulling merchandise? Do you send it back? Do have a bunch of dated political stuff in your warehouse (or wherever you keep it)? Do you ever display both political leanings at the same time, or do you like to specialize?
Do your sales tend to just vary with the size of the crowd, or are there items that just sometimes fly off the shelves? Which items and when?
Was at an outdoor Chili Cookoff event in a touristy Red area.
Didn’t see a single person with that kind of merchandise.
This is what $1 bins are for.
I think a vendor who is selling what latest “fad” is, is already taking chances.
I remember wanting Back Street Boys shirt. Later in life I saw them in a discount store and they were on clearance, almost bought one for S&Gs.
Yeah, I’m hoping Trump will be in a clearance bin, soon.
Kinda wish I had a “win with Nixon” shirt.
I love it!
Now that Memorial Day weekend is approaching, I gotta go to the resorts and see what, if anything, is on sale.
Here’s an article about DILLIGAF at Lake George. It’s a couple of years old (2024), which doesn’t help understand the current situation
…although I notice that he doesn’t seemn to have anything with Trump on it on his webpage:
Great article. The best bit in my opinion…
The operating principle behind most of Bohica Bill’s T-shirts, political or apolitical, is simple: They are shirts that say to the world, “I’m an asshole.” Who but an asshole would wear a T-shirt that proclaims he just came here to get his dick sucked? Who would buy a T-shirt featuring a single bullet, its tip painted red, and the slogan JUST THE TIP, but an asshole? Who on earth would want to display a shirt reading, “You’re into pronouns huh? Me too. Let me she/them titties” but a true connoisseur of anti-woke doofery, a devotee of the art of being a dickhead? “Get a CONDOM for your heart,” one T-shirt reads. “I’m about to FUCK your feelings.”
And so the Trump merch at Dilligaf, despite representing only a fraction of Massry’s sales, serves a crucial purpose. It is a sort of Bat-Signal for assholes. It attracts trolls as a flame does a moth, lures them inside, and sets them loose in an environment full of products that will tickle them. Maybe they’ll buy the trolliest stuff, or maybe they’ll just buy a We the People shirt. But Donald Trump’s smirking face tells them, instantly, that here, at least, is a safe space to be who they really are.
Truer words were never spoken.
Visited a resort spot today.. One where I’d seen plenty of pro-trump garb in the past.
Not a single “Trump” T-shirt or sweatshirt to be seen in the shops. I think he’s finally managed to alienate his base.
Or, at least, sales have gone down enough that the merchants no longer feel compelled to sell the stuff.
I wonder if after 6 years of the orange one, everyone who wanted a shirt has already gotten one.
Last time I updated this half a year ago or so, the trump truck at the (non resort) gun shop I drive by once a month or so had closed and my theory was that the guy was on vacation or quit or was sick (as he was old).
Well, it re-opened a couple of months ago with new people, so that part of my guess was correct. However, I also haven’t seen it open lately, so maybe it just wasn’t making any money. My guess is that they will keep the truck out there and reopen it when the midterms get closer and people are more fired up.
I have a feeling that a lot of them are going to meet the same fate as the Super Bowl t-shirts printed in advance for what turns out to be the losing team - ostensibly get shipped to countries in dire need, except they don’t want those items either.
Went to a bigger resort this weekend. Almost all of the Trump merchandise is gone, but I did see a couple of outliers:
1.) A shirt bearing the Trump presidential portrait that looks like a mugshot. There’s a wall with heights marked on it behind the head, so it really does look like a mugshot. The text reads “Thug Life”. No mention of his name. I only saw one of these.
2.) A wordless T-shirt that bore images of Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Donald Trump. I saw a couple of these, at two locations. Again, no mention of his name. Evidently the shirt thinks it’s praising Republican Presidents, even though Trump would disown lots of Lincoln’s actions, and vice versa. Heck, even Reagan would.
3.) One stand had three Trump shirts, and used his name. It had the picture of the just-grazed Trump holding his ear. There were two other Trump shirts, but I forget what was on them.
I had to look around to find these – they weren’t prominently displayed out front, and the first two stands had them in a place where they looked like leftovers that hadn’t been moved aside yet. I think the third stand was making a statement with them, but even they didn’t have them out front.
Considering that the Trump administration has cut aid to those places, that seems like a huge slap in the face to those countries.
Completely on-brand for this administration.
Or, at least, impoverished them out of the novelty t shirt market.
Cool if this downturn continued to the midterms. Then again September onwards tourism, in general, wanes, with retail slowing down.