How footwear can tell you about one’s character

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“It's gotta be the shoes”

Spike Lee’s Mars Blackmon quipped this slogan when admiring Michael Jordan’s incredible prowess on the basketball court.

This is not what’s happening in Trump’s Cabinet, however; it’s more about how much humiliation his male Cabinet members choose to endure. And yes, it’s a choice.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Trump is “obsessed with these $145 shoes – and won’t let anyone leave without a pair.” [1]

CNN reporting gave the impression that Trump dismissed the WSJ story: [2]

President Donald Trump disputed a recent report that he has bought members of his Cabinet dress shoes but then offered detailed thinking on why he has replaced top officials’ footwear, saying he doesn’t want his Cabinet sporting sneakers.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Trump has taken to guessing his top officials’ shoe sizes, having an aide place orders, and sending them boxes of Florsheim dress shoes along with a note.
Asked by Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade if it was true that he was telling his Cabinet to wear the Florsheim shoes, Trump said, “No. But it’s a nice shoe.”
“What I do is, as somebody that for many, many years has walked around in shoes that were no good and, you know, would not be that comfortable, so I have fun with it,” he told Kilmeade in the interview, which aired Friday.
The president explained that when male members of his team say they have a shoe problem, he tells them he will get them a pair.
“Seems to work out pretty well. Now they look all spiffy and nice,” Trump said.

In his opinion piece yesterday on Democracy Docket, elections attorney Marc Elias chose the same topic to write about (you can read it here). [3]

Trump’s shoe test borders on humiliation ritual. They appear much too big on most of the recipients, and with their pants hemmed to match the president’s absurdly short length, it’s comical. One might assume that Trump purchases the incorrect sizes on purpose.
As Trump quipped to an (unnamed) politician who wears a size 7, “You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.”
So far, confirmed shoe victims include J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Howard Lutnick, Sean Hannity and Lindsey Graham. There are surely more who are suffering in silence.

However, CNN’s follow-up reporting aside, if you listen to the Brian Kilmeade interview with Trump yourself, while initially saying that he doesn’t make them wear the shoes, Trump seems to confirm and gloat about the shoes things: [4]

KILMEADE: Is it true you're telling your whole cabinet to wear the same shoes, these Florsheim shoes?
TRUMP: …I have fun with it. When they tell me they have a problem, I say, 'let me get you a pair of shoes.' It seems to work out pretty well. Now they look all spiffy and nice. I never liked cabinet members walking in sneakers, you know?... So I'll get them a pair of shoes. It's a gift from Donald Trump.

The wearing of oversized shoes is only one display of obedience to Trump. Recent Republican Party events are taking on a Soviet Communist Party feel with demonstrable devotion to the Leader being a requirement to remain in good standing.

This video is from a Republican congressional leadership conference held this week at (yes…) Trump’s Doral golf club in Florida. When Trump ended his speech, there were two minutes of applause, where those on stage didn’t want to be the first one to stop clapping. [5]

The applause episode brought swift comparisons to Joseph Stalin’s reign over the Soviet Union’s Communist Party from nearly a hundred years ago.

Below is the story describing the environment of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, where public devotion for the Leader was expected – otherwise, there were consequences.

From Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago: [7]

Here is one vignette from those years as it actually occurred. A district Party conference was under way in Moscow Province. It was presided over by a new secretary of the District Party Committee, replacing one recently arrested. At the conclusion of the conference, a tribute to Comrade Stalin was called for. Of course, everyone stood up (just as everyone had leaped to his feet during the conference at every mention of his name). The small hall echoed with “stormy applause, rising to an ovation.”
For three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, the “stormy applause, rising to an ovation,” continued. But palms were getting sore and raised arms were already aching. And the older people were panting from exhaustion. It was becoming insufferably silly even to those who really adored Stalin. However, who would dare to be the first to stop? The secretary of the District Party Committee could have done it. He was standing on the platform, and it was he who had just called for the ovation. But he was a newcomer. He had taken the place of a man who’d been arrested. He was afraid! After all, NKVD men were standing in the hall applauding and watching to see who would quit first!
And in the obscure, small hall, unknown to the leader, the applause went on – six, seven, eight minutes! They were done for! Their goose was cooked! They couldn’t stop now till they collapsed with heart attacks! At the rear of the hall, which was crowded, they could of course cheat a bit, clap less frequently, less vigorously, not so eagerly – but up there with the presidium where everyone could see them?
The director of the local paper factory, an independent and strong-minded man, stood with the presidium. Aware of all the falsity and all the impossibility of the situation, he still kept on applauding! Nine minutes! Ten! In anguish he watched the secretary of the District Party Committee, but the latter dared not stop. Insanity! To the last man! With make-believe enthusiasm on their faces, looking at each other with faint hope, the district leaders were just going to go on and on applauding till they fell where they stood, till they were carried out of the hall on stretchers! And even then those who were left would not falter…
Then, after eleven minutes, the director of the paper factory assumed a businesslike expression and sat down in his seat. And, oh, a miracle took place! Where had the universal, uninhibited, indescribable enthusiasm gone? To a man, everyone else stopped dead and sat down. They had been saved! The squirrel had been smart enough to jump off his revolving wheel.
That, however, was how they discovered who the independent people were. And that was how they went about eliminating them. That same night the factory director was arrested. They easily pasted ten years on him on the pretext of something quite different. But after he had signed Form 206, the final document of the interrogation, his interrogator reminded him:
“Don’t ever be the first to stop applauding.”

We should remember that Trump is not the real problem here; Trump cannot have this much influence by himself – he is a single man, making his own decisions.

The people around him – those he rewards, those who perceive power by being around him, those who hold positions they’d never hold without being in his circle – are the real issue.

The enablers are making their own independent choices, and they are choosing humiliation for access to power.

So we must remember - when it came time for Trump’s Cabinet members to choose between an ill-fitting pair of Florsheims from the Leader or their own self-respect…

…they chose the shoes.

No Kings 3.0 – March 28

According to Indivisible, there are more events scheduled for the March 28 No Kings demonstrations than were held in total in October 2025 – with two weeks to go! [9]

In June 2025, over 5 million Americans joined 2,100+ events in all 50 states.

In October 2025, over 7 million Americans joined 2,700+ events in all 50 states.

Wear your sneakers (or Florsheims if you’d like…) and let people know that there are no kings in America.

Narratives

The book I’m reading or movie I’m watching

The Gulag Archipelago (by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

From Wikipedia: [10]

The Gulag Archipelago is a three-volume nonfiction series written between 1958 and 1968 by Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet dissident who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970, before The Gulag Archipelago was published outside the Soviet Union in 1973. The volume explores a vision of life in what is often known as the Gulag, the Soviet labour camp system. [10]

GIF Game

Notes and Sources

[1] Alex Leary, “Trump Is Obsessed With These $145 Shoes—and Won’t Let Anyone Leave Without a Pair,” Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2026, https://www.wsj.com/style/fashion/trump-florsheim-shoes-tucker-carlson-jd-vance-bessent-448567ab

[2] Betsy Klein, “Trump details his shoe philosophy: ‘I have fun with it’,” CNN, March 13, 2026, https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/trump-shoes-cabinet-rubio

[3] Marc Elias, “Who will be the first to take off their shoes?” Democracy Docket, March 14, 2026, https://www.democracydocket.com/opinion/who-will-be-the-first-to-take-off-their-shoes/

[4] Aaron Rupar [@aaron.rupar], Threads, March 13, 2026, https://www.threads.com/@aaron.rupar/post/DV1kqJ1CTht

[5] Aaron Rupar [@aaron.rupar], Threads, March 9, 2026, https://www.threads.com/@aaron.rupar/post/DVrYaelibJG

[6] Bill Grueskin [@bgrueskin.bsky.social], Bluesky, March 10, 2026, https://bsky.app/profile/bgrueskin.bsky.social/post/3mgpixjozlc23

[7] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volumes I-II, Harper & Row, New York, 1973, p. 70.

[8] “About No Kings,” retrieved March 15, 2026, https://www.nokings.org/about-nk

[9] Indivisible Guide [@indivisibleguide], Facebook, March 14, 2026, https://www.facebook.com/indivisibleguide/posts/pfbid0YC9Jw8mLTwFHSmjyPhJkyBCf47NsY2jcCy9E3PxKoLaNsyTvrFAMQXdY6RPpWobql

[10] “The Gulag Archipelago,” Wikipedia, retrieved March 14, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

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They Chose The Shoes