IndyCar has pulled a $50 t-shirt promoting Trump’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix, the August street race Trump conjured into existence with an executive order titled Celebrating American Greatness With American Motor Racing to send IndyCars around the National Mall at 200 miles per hour. The tee paired an image of Abraham Lincoln in a racing helmet with the words “ONE NATION” above and “ONE RACE” below — a slogan uncomfortably close to the white supremacist slogan ORION: “Our Race Is Our Nation.”
The product page pitched the tee in the brisk argot of mall retail: “This year INDYCAR takes over Washington, D.C. for the Freedom 250 Grand Prix and this graphic shirt is the perfect piece to wear! Screenprinted on a high-quality shirt, this fun graphic tee is going to be a piece that brings back great memories of this race.”
Somewhere between the design brief and the print queue, a room full of adults looked at the Great Emancipator, sandwiched inside a racist slogan, and called it brilliant marketing. The shirt fit in well enough alongside the rest of Trump’s celebration: a 24-karat coin with his face on it, a passport with his face on it, a UFC cage match on the South Lawn of the White House, and a 250-foot triumphal arch the president described as being for himself. Two hundred and fifty years of American history, and Trump’s Freedom 250 has finally found its voice.
Defenders on X pointed out that the shirt makes “no mention of skin color anywhere,” which is technically accurate and rarely the bar. IndyCar said it removed the shirt “following feedback from customers.” Said feedback presumably did not include the president’s.
