It’s been two years since an embattled western Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke climbed back in the congressional saddle by warning that a “deep state” consisting of entrenched “billionaires” was seeking “to wipe out the American cowboy completely.”
Widespread reaction to the congressman’s bemusing floor speech, the Daily Montanan observed at the time, “ranged from mockery to confusion.”
Dare I say now that Zinke was on to something. Without a doubt, the rich and colorful history of the cowboy culture has been hijacked right before our eyes.
“Donald Trump’s cowboy diplomacy” is just one recent headline, referring to the president’s stupefying strategies and risky actions that have gobsmacked America’s allies and enemies alike.
It’s reached the point where the eBay print “Donald Trump Cowboy” — tanned, rugged, and riding to the rescue atop an overheated horse — is giving the Marlboro Man a run for his money.
Artificial intelligence aside, there’s no proof our 47th president ever even posed on a pony, let alone clung to the neck of a rearing stallion, a red hero’s cape billowing from his muscular shoulders, as depicted in another best-selling caricature.
Which isn’t to say Trump is not possessed by every trait of “cowboy attitude,” bypassing conventional channels to get what he wants and disregarding the law when something gets in his way.
Writing about the psychology of modern masculinity, Fox News described one example of “cowboy mentality” as pushing the people around you to “man up.” Trump certainly expects no less from the ranch hands he’s rounded up.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth got a jumpstart on playing cowboy while vacationing last August in the Flathead Valley.
The newly installed Pentagon chief shared pictures of him riding horseback, attending a rodeo, firing shotguns, fishing for trout, even paddling a canoe to the middle of a sun-drenched lake while clad in blue jeans, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, and a turquoise neck bandana. He wore everything but a life vest.
“Montana was good to us,” Hegseth posted later on Facebook, praising the Bar W Guest Ranch in Whitefish — where he and his family bunked — for its “excellent” cowboy adventure.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, for her part, sported an oversized cowboy hat while appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to defend Trump’s proposed tariffs. One viewer took to Elon Musk’s X to write, “Well howdy pardner [sic] with the silly ten-gallon hat,” going on to ask Noem if she was “in the beauty pageant Old West Talent competition?”
The remainder of Trump’s posse similarly shares the “might makes right” cowboy convictions: JD Vance, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Tulsi Gabbard, Marco Rubio, and last but not least a bushwhacking “billionaire” like Zinke warned about, Elon Musk.
Historian and self-described “Lincoln Republican” Heather Cox Richardson, the most successful author on Substack, wrote recently that the nation’s infatuation with cowboy symbolism exploded during the 1950s, when the U.S. government began implementing everything from business regulations to civil rights.
“In contrast to what they believed was the ‘socialism’ of the government, they took as their symbol the mythologized version of the western American cowboy,” Richardson explained.
“In the mid-1950s, Americans tuned into Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Bonanza, Wagon Train and The Lone Ranger to see hardworking white men [actually one-third of American cowboys back in the day were black or men of color] fighting off evil, seemingly without the help of government. In 1959 there were 26 westerns on TV, and in a single week in March 1959 eight of the top TV shows were westerns.”
But it wasn’t until Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, with his attention grabbing white cowboy hat, won the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, she said, that “the cowboy image became entwined with the reactionary faction of the party, and Ronald Reagan quite deliberately nurtured that image.”
That said, it’s been a tradition of the Stetson brand to present every U.S. president with his own custom-fitted cowboy hat. Trump, in showing his appreciation, only briefly tried on his Stetson until returning to his collection of MAGA caps.
“Some of us just can’t pull off wearing a cowboy hat,” concedes the Sendero Provisions Company. “And some of us should never wear one. So we made a cowboy hat for everyone.”
As in a MAGA-style cap inscribed “COWBOY HAT.” Perfect for the president who possesses a cowboy attitude but can’t rock the western attire.
“The attempt to install ‘cowboys’ to run a government is a dereliction of duty,” Flathead Beacon reader “P.T.”, who was raised on a ranch that’s still in her family, writes to this columnist.
“This ridiculous cowboy myth that hypnotizes Americans … drives me insane,” she says. “Let’s banish this cowboy fetish once and for all — for the benefit of all of us!”
John McCaslin is a longtime journalist and author who lives in Bigfork.