Jumping off Ursula’s column on Trump perfume (ewwww) and how he’s oh, so nonchalant about Jill Biden being in the picture for the advertisement, which annoyed the hell out of me, I decided to go look at how much Trump merchandise was out there to grift even more money off his adoring fans, and what I found was not pretty. As a matter of fact, it was “pretty” disgusting. There is a dancing Trump Christmas tree ornament. There is Trump wine. There is The Trumpinator Bobblehead. There is a Trumpinator teddy bear. And there are Trump pajama bottoms! This just makes me cringe and hell, no, I don’t want Trump next to my skin, even though it’s not actually him in person because ICK!!!! I did a search for “Trump Merchandise,” and I found FIVE “official Trump websites”. FIVE, people, FIVE, and that’s only on the top half of the first page. Good gods. The merchandise list just gets bigger and bigger, and I can only hope that one day it all rolls downhill into the ocean, and drowns.
We all know the man has no shame, and will never have any. So just for gits and shiggles, I poked through 2 of the “official” websites and nothing cost less than $29.95. Nothing. I guess he’s still paying off all those lawyer bills. From what I’ve seen, which admittedly isn’t THAT much, only what’s in the “news”, his PAC money (for a start) went to lawyers before using what’s left for his campaign. I was under the obviously mistaken knowledge that this isn’t legal. Well, he has enough money to pay off people, so I guess even if it isn’t legal, some money changes hands in the right place(s) and the information slides into oblivion. Unfortunately, all the news these days is right-leaning anyhow, so any time that someone has done something wrong (like Pete Hegseth, hello?) is brushed off as “oh, boys will be boys” instead of “they want THAT to be in this Cabinet position??!!!” Or, “He’s not using the money his adoring fans have sent him for campaigning, but for his court cases” (and those are a whole other story) and no one even blinks. There’s nothing in the media about this. It’s all “Look at the cool things I’m making available for my star struck fans”. It’s not “What the hell are you doing, since he’s not using the money for his campaign, but on himself??!!!!” How can they be so (willfully) blind?
I just … I just don’t get it. I’m not sure I *want* to get it – the understanding of why people are sucked into this nonsense and buy, buy, buy. Why, why, why?
Read a good social psychology textbook. Humans have some similarity to lemmings. Some humans have this more than others.
it’s the brand
Maybe so, but it’s all crap to me. Crap and schlock, I also don’t get the appeal.
The image in my mind is a MAGA home where Velvet Elvis and Velvet Jesus were moved out of the way to put up Velvet Trump(s). The “bookshelves” have no books but the Trump Bible because they are filled with Trump merch. This makes a charming backdrop for winding down the day of swilling beer and complaining about the Department of Education that isn’t teaching their bookless children a damned thing!!
They need to show they’re better than those evil Dems, so it’s tribal and signalling without realising that they’re buying merch that costs less than a dollar for 30 times that. They literally don’t know that they’re the marks for the 1% because the cult leans into all the racist, sexist crap they want.