‘Making Straws Great Again’: Donald Trump’s Re-Election Campaign Is Selling Plastic Straws


As efforts around the country to ban single-use plastic straws continue, the Trump campaign has begun selling Trump-branded plastic straws as merchandise for the president’s 2020 re-election effort, The Hill reported Friday.

The plastic straws sold by the Trump campaign are red, BPA-free, reusable, recyclable, laser engraved with the president’s last name, are sold in a package of 10 and will set back the president’s supporters by $15, per the president’s online store. That works out to about $1.50 per straw.

“Liberal paper straws don’t work. STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP and buy your pack of recyclable straws today,” the product description on Trump’s online store says.

While the website says these straws are recyclable, a report from WIRED notes that many plastic drinking straws are not recyclable due to their small size.

The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted Thursday and joked that the straws might not be legal everywhere across the country, alluding to local plastic straw bans enacted around the nation.

While these straws might not be the same as the single-use straws targeted this year, as the campaign said they are reusable, the website’s rhetoric seemingly takes aim at efforts to eliminate the use of plastic straws of the single-use variety.

Companies across the country and globe have aimed to eliminate plastic straw usage. Global coffee giant Starbucks said last year in a press release that it planned to eliminate its use of plastic straws globally by 2020.

Cruise company Royal Caribbean International announced last year that the line planned to entirely eliminate single-use plastic straws, opting instead to provide customers with singe-use paper straws.

Interested Trump supporters can also buy Trump shirts, bumper stickers and his famous read hats, among other items, at the president’s online store.

Various communities ranging in sizes around the country have enacted bans on the single-use drink accessories. Washington, D.C. banned single-use plastic straws at the beginning of this year. Seattle is another major U.S. city that recently enacted a ban on single-use straws, according to National Geographic.

While plastic straws are part of a plastic pollution problem, some have said campaigns to eliminate them could distract from larger issues with plastic pollution, as straws make up only a small fraction of that, as Bloomberg noted last year.

Brad Parscale, Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, sent a tweet that amassed more than 3,000 likes announcing the straws on Tuesday.

According to a Friday tweet from GOP spokesperson Elizabeth Harrington, the straws seem to be a hit among Trump supporters, as she said the bright red straws sold out. There was no indication as to how many straw packages were made available for purchase, or if the campaign planned to restock the item.

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