A torrent of negative headlines over the past week about President Donald Trump’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein has left him and Republicans grasping for straws to appease their voters.
Literally.
On Tuesday morning, the X account of the Republican Party announced to its 3.4 million followers that the White House is taking on the big issue of the moment: paper straws.
The post read “President Trump is Making Straws Great Again!” and flexed a White House rule, originally introduced in February, to cancel a Biden-era initiative to use paper straws in federal government procurement.
That executive order instructed agencies to end the “irrational campaign against plastic straws” and smeared paper straws as “nonfunctional.”
While signing the order in February, Trump remarked that paper straws occasionally “explode.” His gripe that paper straws “don’t work” also gained some surprising bipartisan support when Jon Stewart agreed that the plastic alternatives are “f---ing terrible.”
Whatever the merits of the rule itself, online commentators were quick to realize that the GOP’s intentions with Tuesday’s post were clearly transparent.
The most liked comment on the post so far came from the online hacker group Anonymous, which wrote “WE DON’T GIVE A F--K ABOUT STRAWS. RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted about the rule earlier on Tuesday and received a similarly icy response.
Users quickly recognized that the rule announcement, unlike the plastic straws it was peddling, was itself recycled from February.
As one disgruntled commenter complained, “I thought we already did that?!?!”
Another user whose profile described herself as “MAHA before it was a thing” commented: “Paper straw mandates? Scrapped in record time. Justice for Epstein’s victims? Still buried under red tape.”
It’s unclear what effect the executive order will have on the straw-using population.
On the one hand, the National Park Service has estimated that 500 million straws are used by Americans every day, and the federal government is the largest buyer of straws.
On the other hand, eight states have banned single-use plastic straws, crimping the potential of a full-scale plastic comeback.
One thing is for sure: Trump’s camp hopes that the pivot to plastic will make it easier for his supporters to sip the Epstein Kool-Aid.
