With a bolder message, brazenly announced

How cocksure can a person get? Donald Trump has a new hate, er, hat. It is a typical MAGA cap that, as usual, has gone full crimson. The red stayed because all the other colours went to a different party (sorry, we couln’t resist). This time, the white text in a serif font is a lot longer by an extra word, and it’s not a call to action, but an audacious declaration: “Trump was right about everything!” And, yes, in full caps, and with the overzealous exclamation mark. To think that all this time, news agencies have been using fact-checkers (hello, Daniel Dale at CNN) when they could have just asked him.

The new hat is part of the luxury offerings at a swanky, just-opened presidential boutique, beautifully called the White House Merchandise Room. The main allure is the range of products created to ensure the brand’s Chief Evangelist remains in good spirits. From photos shared online, we could see a lot of hats, but only one eager head. According to the New York Post, Me Trump’s private gift shop is a room “off the Oval Office”; one of that “was previously a private study—which also saw action as President Bill Clinton’s love den with intern Monica Lewinsky”. The “Trump was right about everything” hat was housed in the right place: filled with a scandal about truth, lies, and a president’s private life.

Me Trump, we often hear, loves historical heft and in this room, he was blessed with it. It’s fitting, in a way. One president used it for hush-hush hookups; the other uses it for a self-serving spectacle. And a little ego lubrication. The phrase emblazoned on the hat plays on a common theme in Donald Trump’s public persona: a firm belief that he’s not just right, but righter than everyone else. The vainglorious, as we have seen, often find themselves in situations where their inflated self-image clashes with reality. And reality, more often than not, wins. The question is, in this White House, where does reality really lurk?