Why Hot Girls Are Obsessed With Richard Nixon

Instagram bombards me with ads for the Nixon Foundation's free, downloadable poster. On X, it's edited photos of Nixon with "Based" or "Patriot" slapped over them. And on TikTok, my "For You" page is all videos of people showing off their Nixon merch collections or vehemently defending the former President.

One user, Peyton Mikolayek, even received PR packages from the Nixon Foundation. In a viral unboxing video, she shows off merch featuring slogans like “Nixon: Now More Than Ever” and a pink hat printed with the phrase “Nixonette.” In other videos, she shows off her collection of “Nixon ephemera” or showcases her adorable "Watergate bug" Halloween costume. For many of us, we only know Nixon as the President who was taken down by Watergate and exclaimed “I am not a crook!”, so it’s bizarre to hear that phrase today edited into an electronica beat and used for a fancam. 

The first thing I learned about Richard Nixon was that he was sick and sweating on national TV as he stood across from one of America’s most photogenic Presidents, John F. Kennedy. My high school AP U.S. History class watched the 1960 Presidential debate as part of our curriculum, and we all picked up on something that the voters in 1960 picked up on, too: JFK was kinda hot and Nixon was totally not. The 1960 Presidential debate has gone down in American history as a watershed moment, where people determined who they would vote for by how good they looked on television. In today's political landscape, that has evolved to include social media.

The current internet culture is very, very different from midcentury America’s broadcast television culture. When we think of 1960s television, we think of cheesy black-and-white sitcoms and nightly news segments. We envision a picturesque America, where all the girls look like Marilyn Monroe and all the men look like Don Draper. People expected their politicians to look like JFK, to be well dressed and charming with a pearly white smile.

In 2026, we have different expectations for our politicians. In the age of the internet, we don’t necessarily want our politicians to be “perfect.” The politicians who are always well dressed, well spoken, and have no flaws can feel fake, or like they're hiding something nefarious. Our culture has been overrun by influencers, who are known for showing off their glamorous, perfect lives. Those influencers largely feel out of touch and unrelatable to many Americans, and so do the politicians who act the same way. 

What most Americans are looking for in 2026 is someone who feels real, and that someone happens to be Richard Nixon right now. The sweaty, slightly awkward politician who died before Gen Z was even born has become somewhat of an icon as of late. Nixon represents authenticity, something that Gen Z is desperately searching for. 

And this isn't just a vibe I'm picking up from my own feed. The scale of the Nixon renaissance is genuinely staggering. Since late 2023, the Nixon Foundation's edits have pulled in roughly 250 million views across platforms, and its following has jumped from 65,000 to 450,000, an audience that's now more than half under 35. It's spilling offline, too: Nixon Library attendance is up 30 percent year over year, and this past May the Foundation sold more merch than it had in the previous decade. A line of "Nixon-Maxxing" hats sold out in 90 minutes, and the scrambled second batch went just as fast. You can even buy a "Pretty Girls for Nixon" tote straight from the Foundation's store, reviving a real 1972 campaign slogan. And the establishment has noticed: Vanity Fair recently devoted a whole feature to Nixon's "Instagram redemption."

Richard Nixon has long been portrayed as one of American history’s greatest villains. He was wrapped up in the Watergate scandal, which many history teachers love to point to as the moment in which people lost faith in their government. While Watergate was a turning point in the relationship that the American people had with their government, I believe it’s unfair to paint Nixon as the villain. To make a long, complicated history of scandals, deep state operations, and political affairs very simple: Nixon was, allegedly, successfully sabotaged by his political enemies, including those working in government agencies.

As writer and historian Nathan Pinkoski put it, “Watergate looks less like the story of an imperial President and more like the story of a leader who lost control of the institutions surrounding him.” The media landscape was also very different at the time, allowing for a small incident to get round-the-clock coverage on television. Newspapers glommed onto the story, too, causing it to make headlines across the country for weeks. As Vice President J.D. Vance recently pointed out, “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hour news story. The idea that it took down a presidency is crazy.”

What’s not crazy is that in the ironic age of social media, Gen Z in particular has grown a deep appreciation for Nixon. They have rallied around him for being a bit quirky, highlighting facts about him and his life that made him seem odd but genuine. One viral video delved into how “Nixon’s diet was worse than Watergate,” explaining that he was obsessed with cottage cheese with ketchup and that “‘ham mousse’ was a Nixon family favorite.” Another viral video brought up that Nixon’s “I am not a crook” speech happened at Disney. People in the comments posted photos of their pilgrimages to the exact spot where he gave the speech, with one user commenting that they “placed a cardboard cutout there to memorialize it.”

They have rallied around him for being a bit quirky, highlighting facts about him and his life that made him seem odd but genuine

Other viral videos on TikTok have praised Nixon for his sweeping victory in the 1972 Presidential election, something that Gen Z conservatives revere as being aspirational. Vance also praised Nixon for this recently, saying “Nixon’s coalition was unbelievably durable… I think there’s a very important political lesson in that for all of us… He was actually like a political genius.” As young Americans are wrestling with how to build political momentum in the current day, they're turning to strong leaders like Nixon for answers. His incredible ability to bring people together is a skill that so many young conservatives are eager to learn from. Many of Nixon’s most vocal fans online are staunch supporters who want people to be aware of his effective political strategies. 

The Richard Nixon trend happening right now across social media platforms is a way to show you’re standing up to the status quo, that you’re not content with the mainstream media narratives. For years, people were taught to believe that Nixon was a “bad” President because of how the media attacked him. But in the social media age, Gen Z can sympathize with the plight of Nixon. They feel like they’ve been attacked, ignored, and overlooked as well in many ways. They feel like they're fighting against a massive political system that wants to keep them quiet.

His resurgence in popularity is an attempt to use social media to tell the truth about a political figure who was defamed for decades. He has become relevant because he feels authentic in an age where the internet and rise of AI slop makes everything feel fake.