Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Online retailers and conservative supporters have commodified the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at lightning speed, with products from T-shirts to trading cards bearing images of the former president—fist raised and bleeding at his Pennsylvania campaign rally—flooding the internet.
“Impeachment failed, jailing him failed, killing him failed. He’s unbeatable. Just like the deal on this merch!” one seller posted on X over the weekend, linking to a $16 T-shirt on Etsy.
“Just threw out all my son’s Superman and Batman memorabilia. Replacing it with bloodied Trump photos and figurines,” conservative commentator Candace Owens posted Saturday on X. She linked to a T-shirt for sale on her personal website that bore a photo of Trump post-assassination attempt with the words “For God and Country.”
In a statement emailed Monday to The Washington Post, Owens said that image is “quite literally the most iconic photo of Donald Trump’s legacy.”
“My only regret is that I’m not a musical artist and therefore cannot turn it into an album cover. Alas,” Owens said.
Some of the merchandise is coming from supporters hoping to capitalize on the harrowing moment to propel Trump’s presidential bid, including online retailers such as the Trump Store and Trump MAGA Shop. The presumptive Republican nominee was rushed off the stage Saturday during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., after shots rang out. The gunman killed one man and seriously injured two others before being fatally shot by the Secret Service. Trump’s ear was injured in the melee.
“The idea of selling merchandise to capitalize on an event like this is not unheard of,” said Marc Farinella, senior adviser to the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.
Farinella drew a parallel to the assassination attempt on Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 as he was seeking a return to the White House. He was shot in the chest during a campaign rally in Milwaukee but went on to deliver a lengthy speech before seeking medical treatment. Roosevelt was “macho in the way that Trump wants to be perceived as macho,” Farinella said, and his campaign harnessed the incident to suit its storyline.
“Trump surviving an assassination attempt, his fist in the air in defiance, it all fits into the narrative about Trump that Trump and his supporters want to tell.”
The rush of T-shirts, hats, stickers, mugs and other merchandise came in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where more than 2,400 delegates began gathering Monday.
“100% of profits from this shirt go to Trump’s campaign,” conservative YouTubers the Hodgetwins posted on X on Saturday, with a link to a T-shirt emblazoned with Trump and the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
Others, some far removed from American politics, apparently sensed a market opportunity: Chinese vendors started churning out T-shirts and other related products on Saturday, shortly after the shooting, Reuters reported. “[The sales] exceeded my expectations. I didn’t expect that Trump would have so many fans,” Zhong Jiachi, 28, a clothing merchant on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, told Reuters.
As of Monday, an Etsy search for “Donald Trump assassination” yielded more than 1,000 results, including posters, T-shirts, mugs and hats. Sellers played into the assassination attempt with slogans such as “Bulletproof: Trump 24,” “Shooting makes me stronger,” and “Grazed and Unfazed.”
“He fights for us, now we must fight for him!” reads a bumper sticker for sale on eBay bearing a picture of a bloodied Trump. Elsewhere on eBay, commemorative trading cards and buttons of the assassination attempt were selling for $10 to $20.
The goods appear to be proliferating rapidly. The day after the assassination attempt, conservative commentator Benny Johnson posted a picture on X of three women wearing T-shirts with Trump raising his fist as Secret Service agents tried to hustle him offstage with the slogan “Never Surrender,” praising the “fashion at the GOP Convention.”
As of noon Monday the two fastest gainers on Amazon’s list of top-selling clothing products were black T-shirts sporting a photo from the Saturday rally, according to an Amazon webpage.
The T-shirts beat out Levi’s men’s jeans and Burts Bees baby boys’ pajamas for biggest gainers in sales rank for clothing over the past 24 hours. The 16th best-selling product on Amazon among clothing, shoes and jewelry was a Trump T-shirt, showing him bloodied, first raised in front of an American flag, according to Amazon.
The eight fastest-gaining handmade products on the site were all assassination-themed merchandise, with the top item—and 10th overall bestseller in the handmade category— being stickers picturing the president holding up two middle fingers and the words “You Missed.” Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Post.)
Josh Gerben, a D.C.-based trademark attorney, said any merchandise using photos from the assassination attempt could be subject to copyright claims. “Depending on the image, and who took it, and the resources of the person who took it, you could definitely see copyright takedown claims come out.”
Though the Trump camp could block online sellers from profiting from his image, Gerben said they would probably prefer to produce their own merchandise for fundraising purposes.
“The amount of effort it would take to get all of this taken down, it’s probably not worth the effort as opposed to selling their own,” Gerben said.
Trump’s campaign—which marketed products with his mug shot after he was charged with illegally conspiring to overturn his 2020 election defeat in Georgia—has yet to release any merchandise related to the assassination attempt.
The attack also seemed to fuel interest in Trump Media & Technology Group, parent company of the social media site Truth Social. On Monday, the stock swelled 31.4 percent to close at $40.58.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
The real winners of the American Dream are those who can most quickly sell divisive political merch, and the irony is that many of these outlets are not even American.
But hey, hustle is hustle.