The MAGA Hat Is Still an Object of Hate

Conservative commentators want us to believe that the hat is just any other piece of meaningless apparel. They’re wrong.

Those blood-red Make America Great Again hats have a tendency to crop up during the country’s dimmest moments. Think of where you’ve seen them over the past two years. They’ve been at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, in the Instagram avatar of the Parkland shooter, and, of course, inside unhinged Trump rallies.

The hats are once again in the conversation after this weekend’s confrontation at the anti-abortion March for Life in D.C. In the aftermath, House Democrat John Yarmuth joked that the hats were “poisoning young minds” and should be banned until “we can figure out what is going on.” The actress Alyssa Milano called the MAGA hat the “new white hood,” referencing the robes worn by the KKK.

So yesterday, Fox News trotted out its worst to defend the MAGA hat. In a segment with Jesse Watters, Jedediah Bila, and host Greg Gutfeld, the panel equated judging teens for wearing MAGA hats with saying women who wear short skirts deserve to be sexually assaulted. “The nerve to say that to a kid, too,” Bila says. “Imagine if you were saying that to a woman. That’s that line, ‘Oh, if you were wearing a skirt like that, you deserve it,’ it’s crazy.”

The difference—evident to everyone who doesn’t cash checks from Fox News—is that, unlike skirts, the MAGA hats do signal something

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