Red Hat Rebranders: How MAGA Became the Final Sanctuary for Shameless Celebrities

A while back, I wrote about how MAGA has become a cheat code for politicians who don’t want to do the hard work of explaining things, governing, or interacting with reality. They just slap on the hat, scream “deep state,” and watch their supporters do backflips to rationalize anything that follows. That article was about Trump-era logic. But now, we’re seeing something worse: celebrities adopting MAGA not out of ideology, but as an image rehab package.

The same way some people call their agents, their stylists, or their PR team after a scandal — these folks call Don Jr. It’s cowardice wrapped in a red hat. We’ll call them what they are: Red Hat Rebranders, or RHRs.

RHRs aren’t true believers. They’re not storming the Capitol. They’re not even watching Newsmax unironically. They’re simply public figures who’ve been hit with scandal, backlash, or a sex crime indictment, and rather than facing consequences, they hop on the Trump train and dare anyone to question them. MAGA, in this context, is not just a political movement—it’s a laundering service. A way to say, “If Trump took me in, who are you to hold me accountable?” It’s the toxic evolution of the argumentum ad verecundiam — the appeal to authority fallacy. Only here, the “authority” is a guy who tried to buy Greenland and suggested nuking a hurricane.

You can usually tell when someone is mid-transformation into an RHR. The signs are painfully obvious. They start showing up at UFC fights even if they’ve never thrown a punch in their life. Their social feeds go from sponsored protein powders to vaguely racist memes in record time. They suddenly rediscover the First Amendment — but only when it involves defending their own unhinged behavior. The phrase “the real racists are the ones talking about race” enters their vocabulary. They appear in a Russell Brand video or sit across from Dana White looking like they just signed a contract with shame itself. One minute, they’re a disgraced pop culture relic. The next, they’re high-fiving Mike Lindell at CPAC and doing pushups next to Vivek Ramaswamy.

https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/red-hat-rebranders-how-maga-became