Trump Staffers Need a Beauty Blender

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images

For more of the Cut’s favorite fashion, beauty, and home finds, sign up for the weekly Cut Shop Newsletter.

As press secretary Karoline Leavitt spoke to the media, she started getting flak on social media for her makeup. Once an assistant to fellow bronzer enthusiast and noted psychic Kayleigh McEnany, Leavitt is now the face of Donald Trump’s White House — a face outfitted with enough foundation, setting powder, eye shadow, and mascara to lead some commenters to question Leavitt’s age. (She’s 27.)

But Leavitt isn’t alone in her heavy-handed approach to makeup. Between Leavitt, Lara Trump, Alina Habba, Kristi Noem, and other frequent faces in the president’s upper echelon — and even Trump multiverse floaters like Cheryl Hines and Carrie Underwood — there is an undeniable look that they all share. Even when their makeup is technically fine, something still feels … off. 

The Republican makeup aesthetic can best be described as aggressive: Overdone and underblended, it manages to be both frantic and calculated. A thick, bone-dry matte base flattens the complexion, while intense, sometimes clumsy, contouring leads to cheekbones that appear receded rather than defined. The lips are overdrawn, while the eyeliner fully encircles the eye in the exact manner I was instructed to do by my middle-school musical-theater teacher. (I imagine it being applied with the frenzied fervor of the creepy kid in every horror movie.) And, like the generous amounts of pigment used by pageant contestants and stage performers, Republican makeup often has the effect of making its wearer look significantly older. The borderline Evangelical devotion to side parts among GOP senators isn’t doing the party any favors, either.

Of course, Republicans are not the only worshippers at the altar of ’00s makeup. Still, the strikingly beige homogeneity of the GOP — particularly within Trump’s inner circle, but also in Congress and across the party as a whole — serves as an amplifier that makes the general makeup choices of many Republican women look more like a uniform.

Following Trump’s election win, tutorials on social media began defining the concept of “conservative makeup” as a cakey mess of heavy concealer, pronounced bronzer, and eye shadow that’s more smoggy than smoky. (“Conservative” in this case means politically, not an application technique.) In November, comedian Suzanne Lambert posted a tutorial poking at the makeup of “gorg MAGA girlies” to TikTok, leading the famously even-keeled Daily Mail to describe her as a “liberal mean girl.” Following the oligarchical circus of January’s inauguration, hundreds of users have posted their own takes mocking the “drained” look of Republican makeup.

Meanwhile, on Instagram, earnest posts from millennial, Gen-X, and boomer conservatives populate the results of the #republicanmakeup tag, some that make tenuous connections between makeup reviews and the First Amendment. Amusingly, one of the only actual good results is a post captioned “generic Republican stripper” from a talented Rhode Island drag queen named Josh Rose, who paired their deliberately heavy (yet artful) makeup with an Americana bustier. Stars and stripes forever, baby! Or at least until the GOP outlaws drag, because well-executed makeup is un-American. Blending your foundation into your jawline? What are you, some kind of communist?