{"id":3257,"date":"2026-03-20T21:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T01:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3257"},"modified":"2026-03-20T21:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T01:00:09","slug":"clown-shoes-r-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/?p=3257","title":{"rendered":"Clown Shoes &#8216;R Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/media-library\/marco-rubio-shuffles-in-too-large-trump-gifted-shoes.jpg?id=65318445&amp;width=1245&amp;height=700&amp;coordinates=285,0,285,0\"><\/p>\n<p>Living in not just the bleakest but dumbest timeline, we must now witness the &#8220;off the charts clownfuckery&#8221; that is the spectacle of quivering, grown-ass Trump lackeys faithfully, fearfully shuffling around the halls of power in his fave &#8220;old-man-from-Queens&#8221; shoes &#8211; most ill-sized &#8211; foisted on them in some weird submission ritual by a sociopath with daddy issues. What he evidently doesn&#8217;t know: A. They&#8217;re made in China, B. Their company is suing him for his illegal tariffs. Up next: Kim Jong Un haircuts for all.<\/p>\n<p>The latest manifestation of Trump&#8217;s petty megalomania came to light when astute observers noticed that first Lil Marco Rubio, then other White House buffoons were <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/MilesTaylorUSA\/status\/2031715054500843699?s=20\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">sporting <\/a>the same often-too-large shoes, which all turned out to be the $145, black oxford Florsheims regularly worn and touted by Trump. In a cringe origin story<em><\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/79646266-64ce-4152-81e1-f0d610d3872b?j=eyJ1IjoibDhod24ifQ.5jEjeLiJZS5OfHG4v_xEBlfZCsRwcX2P4Vv9vuux9BQ\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"> recounted <\/a>by cringe JD Vance, the Favorite Florsheims Saga began at a December meeting in the Oval Bordello when Trump, always laser-focused, began staring at people\u2019s feet and abruptly declared, &#8220;You guys have shitty shoes.&#8221; He asked their shoe sizes. He (likely) ignored\/forgot them. The shoes started arriving. He mercilessly badgered them: &#8220;Did you get the shoes?&#8221; And the dutiful flunkies, having already &#8220;left their manhood pickled in a golden jar on Trump\u2019s desk,&#8221; took on the latest indignity of clomping around in their sadist dad&#8217;s shoes.<\/p>\n<p>Rubio, Vance, Hegseth, Duffy, Lutnick, Lindsey Graham, Sean Hannity. &#8220;All the boys have them,\u201d said a female White House official. &#8220;It&#8217;s hysterical, because everybody\u2019s afraid not to wear them.&#8221; Beware Trump bearing gifts: Armchair analysts took the shoe pageantry and ran with it. It&#8217;s an ugly game of subjugation, an abuser&#8217;s way of exhibiting dominance over minions like the belligerent handshake, belittling nicknames, savage put-downs if any inferior dares to question or stray. It&#8217;s a piece of &#8220;exquisite and complex satire&#8221; about the juvenile male anxiety over penis size. It&#8217;s a humiliation ritual by a small, hollow, clueless, malignant narcissist with &#8220;a black hole of insecurity for a dog shit soul&#8221; whose only vestige of sense of self is divulged in a vulgar, outlandish brand &#8211; fake hair, fake tan, golf cap, red tie, beloved archaic &#8220;mall shoes&#8221; &#8211; he flaunts before his cowering vassals.<\/p>\n<p>Historically, it&#8217;s also a classic move by totalitarian leaders intent on establishing political and psychological fealty. See Mao jackets, <em>Heil Hitlers,<\/em> Stalin humiliating the clumsy Khrushchev by making him dance at his parties, Trump&#8217;s Cabinet meetings become groveling, ring-and-ass-kissing circle jerks. Shoes can be a potent symbol in a performance: Khrushchev, in power, banging his shoe at the UN to punctuate his threat, &#8220;We will bury you&#8221;; an Iraqi protester hurling one, then two, in Arab culture  &#8220;ritually unclean&#8221; shoes at Bush &#8211; who deftly dodged &#8211; at a Baghdad presser to show ultimate contempt; clowns of any variety, circus to MAGA, rendered most foolish in flapping massive flotsam. Imagine preening Pete Hegseth, who just banned un-hot photos of himself, with his tight suits and he-man Nazi tattoos, squeezed into or swimming in sloppy clunkers. <\/p>\n<p>Adding insult to injury for these lame heroes of the manosphere, Florsheims are deeply uncool, &#8220;a brand you last saw when you were cleaning out your dead grandpa\u2019s room and they were under his bed.&#8221; Like most things, they&#8217;re also the brainchild of immigrants, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.florsheim.com\/shop\/aboutUs.html?pt_asset=SubMenuOurStory\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">launched <\/a>in Chicago in 1892 by German immigrant Sigmund Florsheim and his eldest son Milton. At its peak through two World Wars, a $5 pair of &#8220;genuine Florsheims&#8221; reportedly sold every 4 seconds; a timely gag in the great<em> <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0071315\/?ref_=ttqu_ov_i\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Chinatown<\/em><\/a>, set in 1937, has Jack Nicholson&#8217;s Jake Gittes wading through diverted muddy water and scowling, &#8220;Goddamn Florsheims!&#8221; Its website boasts of &#8220;a reputation for being at the forefront of the newest trends while staying true to a legacy (of) quality craftsmanship&#8221;; in truth, they&#8217;re now mostly found in downscale shopping malls and discount stores, struggling to escape a rep as relics of the past.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Florsheim&#8217;s belongs to parent company Weyco Group <em><\/em>Inc. Unsurprisingly &#8211; so much again for the Klan-redolent &#8220;America First&#8221; mantra &#8211;  they&#8217;re made overseas in India, China, Cambodia, Dominican Republic. They seem to have a reasonably modern (sorry, &#8220;woke&#8221;) worldview, with Black models and a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.florsheim.com\/shop\/sustainability.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Sustainability In Action<\/a> program. And they&#8217;re<a href=\"https:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/article\/trump-flor...\" target=\"_blank\"> suing <\/a>Trump &#8211; atypically, not just multiple federal agencies, but Trump himself &#8211; seeking refunds<em> plus interest <\/em>for the &#8220;unprecedented power grab&#8221; of his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/topic\/lawsuit\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">unlawful, <\/a>unilaterally levied <a href=\"https:\/\/baynews9.com\/fl\/tampa\/news\/2026\/02\/26\/wisconsin-tariffs-supreme-court-lawsuit-trump-administration-weyco-group-kohl-s-milwaukee-tool-florsheim-shoes\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">tariffs<\/a> &#8220;without notice, public comment or Congressional authorization.&#8221; SCOTUS already struck them down last month, citing the possible &#8220;mess&#8221; of upcoming &#8220;refunds of billions of dollars&#8221;; on March 4, a U.S. Trade Court judge basically said  have at it when he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/story\/money\/2026\/03\/05\/judge-orders-us-to-process-tariff-refunds\/88999912007\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">ordered<\/a> the regime to start paying those ill-begotten billions. <\/p>\n<p>For now, the case is stayed. But many other companies are <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailykos.com\/stories\/2026\/3\/6\/2371995\/-Trump-has-the-power-to-do-anything-except-pay-back-tariffs-apparently\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">demanding <\/a>their money back, and so is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/trump-tariff-update-24-states-take-legal-action-11631886\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">coalition <\/a>of two dozen states. As the pitchforks come out, online wags stay busy devising shoe puns: toeing the line, holding your tongue, comments laced with wit, heels with no soles, an ad for Sieg Heels: &#8220;Nobody puts the step in goosestep like Sieg Heels!\u201d Meanwhile, our  F\u00fchrer&#8217;s debased lickspittles stumble across the world stage, tripping on their own moral cowardice en route to the apocalypse. They need to remember Solzhenitsyn\u2019s <em><\/em>elemental advice in <em>Gulag Archipelago<\/em>: \u201cDon\u2019t ever be the first to stop applauding.&#8221; Or, God forbid, flapping their fucking, war-mongering, world-razing clown shoes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube\"> <span class=\"rm-shortcode\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"656c956a778c57031f858fad00a73d74\" style=\"display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"auto\" lazy-loadable=\"true\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SCV0tKvwwl8?rel=0\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" width=\"100%\"><\/iframe><\/span> <small class=\"image-media media-caption\" placeholder=\"Add Photo Caption...\">&#8211; YouTube<\/small> <small class=\"image-media media-photo-credit\" placeholder=\"Add Photo Credit...\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SCV0tKvwwl8\" target=\"_blank\">www.youtube.com<\/a> <\/small> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Living in not just the bleakest but dumbest timeline, we must now witness the &#8220;off the charts clownfuckery&#8221; that is the spectacle of quivering, grown-ass Trump lackeys faithfully, fearfully shuffling around the halls of power in his fave &#8220;old-man-from-Queens&#8221; shoes &#8211; most ill-sized &#8211; foisted on them in some weird submission ritual by a sociopath [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[742],"class_list":["post-3257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ciencia-y-tecnologia","tag-vr-news-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vr-news.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}