Took my family to visit DC this past week. Enjoyed it a lot, with one exception.

[Tommy Carcetti]

This past week as part of our family vacation, I took my family to visit Washington, DC.

For anyone who's thinking of taking a trip there, it's well worth it.

In two days time, we saw the Air and Space Museum, Natural History Museum, National Archives and American History Museum. We also walked the National Mall, walk past the Capitol, Washington Monument, White House and World War II Memorial. (All of this is entirely free, in case you are wondering!)

We wanted to go all the way to the Lincoln Memorial but the hot weather and long walk put a bit of a damper on that.

And we got to travel the Washington Metro, one of the cleanest and most efficient public transportation systems in the country. (You feel like you're on a spaceship on those trains!)

All in all, it was a great time for everyone, with one exception.

Specifically, outside every museum, you'll see dozens and dozens of vendors. Mostly food trucks, but some people selling memorabilia as well.

And, no, that wasn't the problem.

What got me upset and angry was some of the memorabilia carts. They had all the normal DC merchandise--shirts, mugs, hats, snowglobes, etc.

But several of them were actually selling "Trump 2024" hats and merchandise. A couple also had the inane "Let's Go Brandon" merchandise as well.

Now, I didn't feel like making a scene. And I had no idea if the person working the cart actually had any sort of ownership interest in it, or was simply some poor minimum wage worker hired to man the register. So I didn't bother confronting anyone. (Honestly, the people manning the booths did not look like the prototypical Trump supporters, but who knows.)

But just seeing that Trump merchandise made my blood boil. Because I immediately thought back to the footage of January 6th. And throngs of thousands of Trumpists on that day, on that very same National Mall, all marching on the Capitol. All in a violent insurrection in an attempt to disrupt the peaceful and democratic transfer of power in this country. And all because of that one cursed man whose name was on those very hats and shirts.

Now, I'm no fool. I know it's a free country. I know we have the First Amendment. People will be allowed to sell what they want to sell, and we can't interfere with that.

But if people actually had any sort of sense or common decency, the name "Trump" or any attempt to merchandise on it would never be seen on the National Mall, knowing what happened on January 6th. It was sickening.

Now, the good news is, I saw thousands of people in my two days in DC. And of those thousands of people--with people selling Trump merch left and right--I saw a grand total of one person wearing Trump merch. One.

One guy--probably late teens to early 20s--was wearing a Trump 2024 hat. (He was also wearing a Fall Out Boy shirt, which if you wanted to convey the image of a badass, tough rock band, Fall Out Boy is about as far from that image as you can get. Unless he was intentionally trying to be ironic. Who knows...)