The dictator's new shoes? Trump demands his subordinates wear the same footwear.
With revelations about a bizarre footwear fetish, the president joins a long line of autocrats throughout history by insisting that his subordinates copy his style — or else.
I saw an article yesterday in The Telegraph about Trump coercing his staff to wear the same shoes as him. At first, I thought it had to be a joke. This is such a classic dictator trope — forcing subordinates to copy your style — that it couldn’t possibly be real. For instance, look at Mao Zedong and the “Mao Suit,” Saddam Hussein and “The Mustache", or Joseph Stalin and the “Generalissimo Uniform.” I dropped photos below. The phenomenon is so well documented that I assumed this was a parody.
But apparently… it is not. Donald Trump reportedly has a footwear fetish. He’s testing the loyalty of his lieutenants by whether they’ll lace up in the same black shoes he wears. And yes, it’s creepy.
Just take a look at the names of the folks who are now dutifully wearing Donald Trump’s preferred footwear. JD Vance. Marco Rubio. Pete Hegseth. Sean Duffy. Howard Lutnick. Sean Hannity. Lindsey Graham. These people are now allegedly sporting $145 Florsheim oxfords at Trump’s behest. One unnamed cabinet secretary shelved his Louis Vuittons, according to The Telegraph, lest he offend Trump by donning shoes the president didn’t want him to wear.
“All the boys have them,” one female White House official told the Wall Street Journal, and another added that “everybody’s afraid not to wear them.”
That last line stuck with me. Here’s the full quote:
“It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them.” — White House official
Yes, hysterical! The president of the United States is so insecure that he demands the people around him wear the same shoes that he has on, or he will be unhappy. In fact, U.S. government officials are now so afraid — presumably for their jobs and not their physical safety, at least not yet — that they have followed suit and walk around in shoes they don’t even like to please the boss — just so he doesn’t fire them.
I’m laughing so hard I just spit out my democracy.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we?
I’ll admit that, at first glance, this story reads as the kind of eccentric presidential quirk that late-night hosts usually poke fun at. On its face, it’s definitely silly. A billionaire in a Brioni suit has developed a sudden passion for a discount shoe brand (Florsheim pairs start at $49.90) and is strong-arming his cabinet into wearing them. The jokes write themselves.
But then you open a history book and realize, “Oh. This is not so fun. This is quite creepy, in fact.”
Students of authoritarian behavior will recognize this “quirk” immediately. The forced adoption of a leader’s personal aesthetic — clothing, accessories, grooming, or style — is one of the oldest markers of a regime drifting from democratic norms toward something… else. Really. It’s a mechanism of submission so well-documented across cultures and centuries that, in my view, its appearance in the Trump White House is now more of a historical “mile marker” than it is a punchline.
It’s so obvious that there are almost too many examples to list.
For example, there was Chinese dictator Mao Zedong and his Zhongshan suit (which we’ve taken to calling the “Mao suit” here in the West), which became the visual symbol of revolutionary loyalty. Its deliberate drabness was the point. The suit was supposed to represent socialism by erasing individual distinction and displaying ideological conformity. Senior party officials adopted it out of fear that if they deviated from the leader’s aesthetic, they’d be singled out for investigation.
How quirky!
In Iraq, former dictator Saddam Hussein’s thick black mustache became one of the subtler instruments of his terror. Iraqi men, particularly those in government and the military, widely adopted the same style. “Why do they all look the same?” many of us would wonder, watching CNN footage of Saddam gathering with his henchmen to issue threats to the United States and its allies. Well, it turns out there was no official requirement to have a mustache. There was just an unspoken rule in Saddam’s circle that you followed his lead — or risked death by defying him.
How fun!
When his regime fell, one of the first things men did to signal their freedom was go to the barber shop and shave, literally.
In the Soviet Union, Stalin's signature military tunic became the unofficial costume of every senior party official, general, and bureaucrat. The uniformity eventually bled into the culture, where people were expected to dress in a similar way in their state-manufactured outfits. When young Soviets in the late 1950s began wearing bright Western-style clothes — like narrow pants, colorful jackets, or thick-soled shoes, if they could find them — the state treated it as a political emergency. Police squads raided their gatherings and tore the legs off their trousers in the street.
The catchphrase of the era said everything: “Today he dances jazz, tomorrow he will sell his homeland.” Put another way, Western clothes were treated more like “evidence” than a rebellious fashion statement — evidence that might get you locked up under Article 58 of the Criminal Code, the tool the authorities used to penalize “propaganda,” “agitation,” and “subversion” when they couldn’t dredge up evidence of an actual crime.
How hilarious!
You can see where I’m going with this.
Do I think Donald Trump is about to decree that you, the reader of this article, and all of your friends and family buy his ugly $145 shoes? No, I do not. And if he did, he’d give us such a great protest symbol. I can already see the bonfires across the country. Piles of Trump’s plain-toe black shoes lit on fire.
But there’s a bigger reason that political scientists and historians pay attention to this sort of thing — other than the obvious absurdity of enforced fashion. The characteristic is deeply revealing. Indeed, it tells us a lot, psychologically, about what type of leader America has right now in the White House.
First, the act of insisting U.S. officials dress like Trump helps eliminate visual individuality from his inner circle. He’s always wanted this. In fact, the people who are first to get fired around Trump are usually the ones who stand out too much (Elon can tell you about that). But when everyone in the room is wearing what the leader is wearing, there’s only one distinct visual presence. The leader himself.
Second, it creates a loyalty test of sorts, which Trump is already known for. The MAGA hat was the dumbest version. Wear it, and you signal tribal membership. But the Florsheim shoe is a more “exclusive” way of demonstrating fealty. It’s not sold at the rallies. Rather, it’s a personal gift from Trump. According to reports, Trump will guess the shoe size of a staffer before giving them a pair. As such, wearing them becomes a private act of submission (particularly if he’s guessed your size wrong, and you’re forced to walk around with clown shoes — or your toes curled up in the tips).
Third, and perhaps most importantly for Trump, it identifies who can be controlled. If your cabinet secretary feels he must retire his Louis Vuittons because you gave him shittier shoes, you’ve just gotten him to admit something. That you own him. Trump loves to do that. When I was there during the first term, I personally witnessed the president nitpick the appearances of government officials (who then came in dressed differently the next day) — and critique the hair and make-up of women in his cabinet (who’d go to the salon before every TV appearance after that).
He notices. And judging by the picture above — of his team stupidly wearing the same black shoes that as he is — it’s clearly working.
So are they really afraid? Probably not. But they should be.
The White House official who told the Wall Street Journal that “everybody’s afraid not to wear them” was, almost certainly, joking. I suppose the remark was meant to land as self-aware absurdism, like, isn’t it so funny that we’re all walking around in the same shoes? What a cohesive White House we have! In normal political times, maybe it would be exactly that. A charming anecdote about a fun-loving president.
But we are not in normal political times. We are in a moment when the president of the United States has signed executive orders directing authorities to investigate former staffers for “treason” if they’ve criticized him, has sought criminal charges against his political opponents for daring to call out his abuses of power, has attempted to lock up elected Democrats who’ve warned of presidential corruption, has threatened business titans with ruin for not supporting his agenda, has sent U.S. forces into Blue States to flex his muscle, has sent the military into foreign countries to arrest leaders who’ve mocked him, has mused about laying waste to entire nations that don’t bend to his will, and so on.
So, in this case, I think we can agree that the “mandatory shoes” are creepy. And any of Trump’s cabinet members who think the footwear isn’t mandatory will probably be thinking differently this week. The White House has seemingly leaked the story to multiple outlets about how personally important these leather show are to the president. The message has been sent across Washington.
A man who can make the Vice President of the United States wear his shoes (JD Vance reportedly has four pairs of them) has already established something very important about the nature of power in his administration. So for the next few years, or however long we’re in this mess, I’d urge you to pay close attention to what people are wearing on their feet when they’re around the president.
They’re telling you something.
Your friend, in defiance,
What brand of adult diapers is required?
Can't wait for him to require them all to wear orange makeup.