“The aspiration shoe for the average guy” – Florsheim motto in the early 1900’s
By Marc C. Johnson
My dad, God rest his soul, was a pretty good dresser. He didn’t have expensive suits or ties or shoes, but I remember that he had a pair of Florsheim dress shoes. He considered them “top of the line.”
Perhaps that is the only thing my very sensible dad would have had in common with the man who puts his Florsheim’s under the Resolute Desk.
Trump has a thing, apparently, for Florsheim shoes.
All things being equal I’m an Allen Edmonds man, or Johnston and Murphy. I had a pair of Florsheim’s once upon a time. Didn’t like ‘em.
I’m guessing Marco Rubio doesn’t like his new pair either. Even though they are the aspiration shoe for the average guy …
Wait, what?
For those of you who don’t follow the really important news I am here to report that Donald J. Trump, your president with the too long neckties, the too baggy blue suits that hang uncomfortably on his 80-year old frame with the jacket seldom buttoned, and (reportedly) with lifts in his shoes has been “gifting” (no, not grifting) a particular style of Florsheim shoes to certain special people.
Marco Rubio, the man reported to be Secretary of State, has been photographed wearing his pair of these shoes in a photo that frankly looks like every family photo when a three year old toddler slips into dad’s shoes and everyone wants a picture and has a laugh.
Nice socks, though.
The common wisdom on the Internet is that Rubio wore gift shoes two sizes too big rather than upset the big boss by acknowledging that, well, Trump got his shoe size wrong pretty much at the same time he was getting the Strait of Hormuz wrong.
Vice President JD Vance reportedly also received a pair of Trump Florsheim’s, as did members of the Cabinet, Sean Hannity, the Fox News talking head, and Senator Lindsey Graham, because of course he did.
The Wall Street Journal broke (in) this story that was picked up around the Internet – narrow, wide and extra wide – with extra wide obviously the size Rubio has been stumbling around in.
Here’s The Guardian with the footnotes:
Sitting behind the Resolute desk, Donald Trump fixed his gaze on JD Vance’s and Marco Rubio’s feet. “Marco, JD, you guys have s—y shoes,” said the US president, consulting a catalogue and asking their shoe size. Rubio said 11.5 and Vance 13. Trump leaned back in his chair and remarked: “You can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.”
The story is recounted in a Wall Street Journal newspaper report that tells how officials, advisers and visiting allies are quietly acquiring leather dress shoes courtesy of Trump, who presents them with the enthusiasm of a travelling salesman.
Cabinet meetings, lunches and Oval Office drop-ins can abruptly turn into discussions about footwear.
“Did you get the shoes?” he will ask colleagues, according to several people familiar with the ritual quoted by the Journal. Some have even found themselves trying them on in the Oval Office.
One female White House official observed wryly: “All the boys have them.” Another added: “It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them.”
Trump’s shoe leather largesse will do little to dispel perceptions of his White House as a boys’ club. Research by the Brookings Institution found that his administration is the least diverse this century. In his first 300 days, the total share of women confirmed by the Senate was just 16%.
Let’s just affirm that the loyalty of members of this administration to the mob boss is pretty absolute.
The Florsheim model on offer retails for $145, but the cost of wearing them is priceless. Blisters included.
Central casting crowd
We know that this administration is obsessed with “optics” – black oxfords included – which means how things look to we mere mortals.
Trump has often tipped us off to his shoe optics fetish by saying that a Cabinet member or Air Force general is “right out of central casting,” which may explain why Pete Hegseth is in a job where he can do maximum damage, while displaying very Trumpian central casting bonafides.
I mean, come on, doesn’t Pete just scream “MAXIMUM DAMAGE !!!” Maybe his oxford are too tight.
The administration – Trump at least – does not like the optics of a U.S. Tomahawk missile destroying a girls school in Iran and killing 165 civilians, so the president who is always on top of everything said he didn’t really know anything about the missile attack after saying that it was maybe an Iranian Tomahawk. Which really is impossible.
The shoe-supplier-in-chief was too busy, perhaps, checking the sale section of the Florsheim website to know that if …
… the U.S. role in the attack is confirmed, it would rank among the military’s most deadly incidents involving civilians in decades. Congress created a special Pentagon office to prevent the accidental targeting of civilians but it was dramatically scaled back by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth soon after he took office last year.
No photos!
Missile Pete is also very much an optics guy and it seems he didn’t like some of the recent pics of himself looking very much like a what a deranged former Fox News host looks like.
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Here’s one account of this Pentagon photogate:
Press photographers are no longer permitted to take photos inside the Pentagon press briefing room after several outlets published “unflattering” photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, two people familiar with the situation told the Washington Post.
On March 2, Hegseth held a press conference with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to brief the press on the U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iran that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in February.
Shortly after, wire service photographers – such as those from the Associated Press, Reuters and Getty Images – published photos of the defense secretary speaking with the media. This is typical for nearly all press conferences held by a government official.
As Tom Jones, a really great media columnist, wrote at the Poynter website:
Boy, oh boy. These guys in the Trump administration. Just when you think they can’t get any more petty and thin-skinned and, to paraphrase one of their favorite words, snowflaky, they find another way to bellyache about something.
Is it on the other foot yet?
But back to the optics.
With the war against Iran going so well, with oil flowing from the Middle East and gas prices coming down and with regime change kicking in all that is left is for the many, many men from central casting to take a little time off for a … shoe shine.
Or they might want to check on the status of the lawsuit Florsheim’s parent company has brought against the Trump Administration to recover illegal tariff revenue that the company has had to pay by passing along costs to shoe wearing Americans.
New York Magazine sizes that up:
In March 2025, Milwaukee Business Journal reported that Weyco [parent company of Florsheim] was rushing “1 million shoes to U.S. ahead of China tariff hike.” A week after “Liberation Day” on April 2, the Associated Press quoted Florsheim’s warning that doubling the tariffs on leather imports from Asia “means a significant cost increase that will impact consumers.” Last summer, Florsheim told several outlets that the company had been forced to raise prices by about 10 percent because “[t]he tariff escalations have created disruption and uncertainty in the shoe industry like we have never seen before.”
In December, Weyco filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, asking the U.S. Court of International Trade to “declare the president’s unprecedented power grab illegal.” The company also requested a refund, with interest, of the $16 million it paid in tariffs last year, if the policy were struck down. Last month, when the U.S. Supreme Court did just that, Florsheim co-authored a piece for The Contrarian titled “Business Leaders Welcome SCOTUS Tariffs Decision.”
I tell ya, the optics on this are terrible, but if the shoe fits, or even if it doesn’t.
We gotta admit our central casting crowd is always on the back foot.
We interrupt this nonsense to return you to a war that Donnie Loafer says is already “won.”
Meanwhile, the bombing will continue until the other shoe drops.
About Marc C. Johnson: I am a Nebraska native, grew up in South Dakota and migrated to Idaho after college to work in broadcast journalism. In 1986, I joined the “comeback” campaign of a legendary Idaho political figure – Cecil D. Andrus – who eventually served four terms as governor and four years as Secretary of the Interior, not bad for a Democrat in a very conservative state. I had a small role in helping Cece Andrus win his last two gubernatorial terms. I did communication and crisis consulting work, and since “retiring” to the beautiful north coast of Oregon have written three books on U.S. Senate history. I’m working on a new book on another legend – this one a legend in journalism.
You can find my books here
I write this Substack to scratch my itch to connect history with current politics. I hope, in some small way, to contribute to understanding of this perilous moment for our democracy, for free speech and facts. Subscribe here for more.