The high cost of MAGA manhood

If there’s one thing MAGA males believe deep in their bones, it’s that “real” men eat a lot of beef. Multiple members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are obsessed with men’s testosterone levels and are highly attuned to right-wing social media chatter that conflates eating red meat with being “high-T,” despite the fact that science doesn’t support this theory. Kennedy in particular has been invested in defending the honor of red meat, repeatedly arguing, against standard medical recommendations, that diets high in animal fat are good for you. But long before the popularity of this pseudoscientific nonsense, a rare steak or hamburger was treated as the icon of manhood, especially in conservative circles. Republicans would routinely spread false claims that Democrats wanted to take away beef and even floated conspiracy theories that vegetarian foods are a plot to emasculate American men. 

The pattern of rising food prices under Trump is concerning and annoying, and the cost of beef is soaring. Despite the administration’s efforts to blame Joe Biden, who left the White House more than a year and a half ago, blame for this inflation lies with the Trump. His pointless tariffs, poor economic management and war with Iran, which raised gas prices, all have had an impact. The beef industry has also been hurt by a screwworm infestation, and it’s not helping that the Trump administration drastically cut the federal agencies tasked with fighting such plagues. 

Beef is just one of the many totems of MAGA masculinity that has been especially impacted by Trump’s inflationary policies. Equally as painful for MAGA men trying to prove their manhood through consumerism is the soaring price of gasoline, along with the rising price of gas-guzzling trucks and cars. In both cases, Trump has had a direct hand in making these masculinity signifiers cost more. Rising fuel prices are a direct result of his unnecessary war, and American automakers are likely to be hit especially hard by the president’s trade war with Canada. 

While high prices are felt by most people in the country, they are especially painful for those living in red areas, where poverty rates are typically higher and wages are usually lower. This makes it harder not only to buy those big ticket items, but also many other fetish objects of right-wing masculinity that stand to be affected by the Iran war and the Canadian trade war. The prices of whiskey, motorcycles and even construction materials — necessary for anyone who wants a big house or a woodworking hobby — are all expected to rise from Trump’s pointless tariffs. Even the cost of beer, that all-American consumer item, is climbing because of the trade wars. 

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On Tuesday, MS NOW aired a clip — that quickly went viral — of a three-time Trump voter named Shane Foot cursing the president at the Iowa State Fair. Looking every inch the stereotype of a man trying too hard to prove his masculinity, with a beard, sunglasses, tattoos and a muscle shirt bearing a foul-mouthed, Foot said he’s “disappointed” in Trump, “because the prices haven’t gone down.” 

“Stop the bulls**t,” Foot added, shrugging his large shoulders.

Beyond inflation, overconsumption has also become a point of pride for the right for decades, and often in a very gendered way. Efforts to promote electric cars, for instance, are treated like a direct threat to freedom and manhood alike on Fox News, with host Greg Gutfeld suggesting it’s the same as banning classic rock like “Creedence Clearwater or Lynyrd Skynyrd.” His fellow anchor Jesse Watters has said that only “house husbands” would drive electric cars. Eating red meat is often held out as a way to rebel at supposedly nagging female leaders, while the more environmentally-friendly soy products are demonized with a myth that it turns men into “soy boys.” When James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Texas, was seen eating vegetarian food, Fox News went to town, castigating him for weeks and labeling him effeminate.

Much of this is a reaction to efforts by progressives that encourage people to shrink their carbon footprint and waste less of the earth’s resources. Fox News often explicitly equates reduced consumption with emasculation; in November, Watters characterized people who have smaller apartments and vote for clean energy as having “a degree in, like, Southeast Asian feminist literature.” This is rooted in the domination politics of the right, which views the planet not as a home to be cared for but as a feminized play toy to be used and discarded. After all, it’s not for nothing that the slogan “drill, baby, drill” has been popular with Republicans for nearly two decades. Consciously or not, it equates oil drilling with sexual penetration, and has helped to inspire the notion among MAGA men that having a car with a poor fuel economy somehow makes them studs.

But such posturing depended on having an economy where the low price of consumer goods made overconsumption affordable; it’s a lot easier to buy a big truck to prove your supposed manhood when gasoline is $2.50 a gallon. While many Trump voters have helped to price themselves out of the pickup truck-and-steak lifestyle, there’s an even bigger irony: The president loved the “drill, baby, drill” slogan more than anyone, but his efforts to destroy the planet before his generation leaves it may have backfired. As Sabrina Haake wrote in May, “green energy will have the last laugh — because of Trump.” His war with Iran unintentionally set off a scramble for renewable energy sources, which promise to be cheaper in the long run and available on a faster timescale than many initially anticipated.

In a June Substack newsletter, Paul Krugman noted that the right has felt that clean energy “threatens their masculinity.” They backed Trump, hoping his belligerent hatred of any non-polluting energy would shield their apparently fragile manhood. Instead, because of his inflationary policies, MAGA men are now going to have to accept the less expensive lifestyle of soy boys.