Former President Donald J. Trump hawks $59.99 Bibles with the same words he uses to win the votes of evangelical Christians. He sells swatches of the suit he wore in a mug shot while also raising money for his campaign by calling himself a “political prisoner.” He describes Truth Social, his refuge for those banned on other social media sites — and his best chance to substantially increase his wealth — as a bulwark against liberal companies out to silence Christians and conservatives.
As he seeks to reclaim the presidency, Mr. Trump has reprised the pitchman role from his reality TV days, with a crucial difference: He has intertwined the marketing of his private business affairs with the messaging of his campaign, leveraging his political stature for profit.
All of it could be described as Martyr Inc., a machinery that makes Mr. Trump money and promotes his re-election by characterizing him as unjustly persecuted and selflessly saving his supporters from a similar fate.
His most loyal followers have gone along for the ride, forming a niche marketplace for products bearing the Trump name and vowing to help prop up the stock price for the company that owns Truth Social. Even after recent declines, Mr. Trump’s shares are worth more than $3 billion, though he cannot yet sell. With Mr. Trump’s tacit encouragement, his supporters have characterized buying Trump products as a measure of patriotism. That was the former president’s message in his Truth Social pitch for the customized Bible on the cusp of the Independence Day holiday: “Every Patriot should have one.”
That conflation of profit and the presidency was highlighted as stock in the social media company tumbled after Mr. Trump’s recent conviction on 34 felony counts in Manhattan.
Members of an investor chat group on the site rallied behind both the stock price and Mr. Trump’s re-election. They describe short sellers who bet against the stock as part of the same evil apparatus seeking to prosecute and defeat him. (He also faces indictments in criminal cases in Florida, Georgia and Washington, though none is likely to come to trial before the November election.)
“I’ve always considered myself a DJT stock holder & campaign donator,” wrote a user with the screen name Monstermolder22, adding, “The main reason I’ve been in this from the beginning, watching my original investment fall to 80% of its’ original worth, is because I believe so strongly that Trump is the only way we save America.”
Another poster, UltraMAGAFed, wrote that “we are at war” and urged other members to buy and hold more stock. “November 5 is America’s Alamo. We are ALL IN. LET’S FKN GO!!!!!”
The stakes of success in this new market and of winning in November are high for the financial future of the Trump family.
Mr. Trump faces threats from civil judgments and unresolved tax audits totaling hundreds of millions dollars more than he has had on hand in recent years. His income, driven during the last two decades by “The Apprentice” and related licensing deals, collapsed with the show’s ratings before he entered politics. In the lurch, he has sold off his interests in a golf course, a hotel and a mansion. New opportunities for Trump-branded businesses have come mostly from projects backed by Saudi Arabia, which would benefit from a friend in the White House. That raises questions about the value of the Trump name should he not return to power.
In response to questions for this article, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said: “President Trump’s campaign is entirely separate from his private business ventures, and he was the first president to leave office less wealthy than when he entered.”
Presidential candidates typically go out of their way to avoid even the appearance that they might benefit financially from their candidacy. Not so for Mr. Trump.
Americus Reed, a professor of marketing at Mr. Trump’s alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said the former president’s blurring of commerce and political affiliation subverted the human instinct to resist being tricked into spending money.
“It doesn’t feel like you’re being sold something,” Dr. Reed said. “It just feels like your identity is being affirmed.”
‘Make America Pray Again’ for $59.99
There was a time, during the heyday of “The Apprentice,” when suitors bearing large checks streamed into Trump Tower hoping that the television star on the 25th floor would let them license his name and image as an icon of success. Makers of clothing, cologne, steak, booze and buildings put the Trump name on products and advertisements across the country. Mr. Trump became the public face of multilevel marketing schemes for vitamins and obsolete video phones. He created Trump University, which purported to teach the secrets of his real estate success but closed amid investigations and lawsuits alleging that it was a fraudulent scheme.
The latest Trump-branded products aim at a specialized — and intensely devoted — segment of the economy.
Mr. Trump met a mix of boos and cheers in February when he took the stage at a sneaker enthusiast convention in Philadelphia to introduce limited-edition Trump “Never Surrender” high-tops. He held up a pair, showing the embossed “T” and calling them “the real deal.” For $399, the shoes looked as if they could have been spray-painted gold, laces and all, save a hint of flag symbolism at the ankle.
Mr. Trump then pivoted to asking for votes.
“What’s the most important thing?” he asked the crowd. “To go out and vote, right? We have to go out and vote. We got to get young people out to vote, and you’re going to vote, and we’re going to turn this thing around. This country is not doing so well. We’re going to turn this country around fast.”
He then invited to the stage a woman wearing a “Trump 2024” sweatshirt. Overwhelmed to be at his side, the woman cried as she spoke over rising chants of “U.S.A.”
“Yes, we need him,” she said. “He’s a Christian. He’s a good, honest man. They’re after him for no reason. Go out and vote for Trump.”
At least some portion of the sales price went to Mr. Trump, though he declined to say how much (knockoffs, sans “T,” are now available for $99 elsewhere). He has also declined to say who owns the company — 45footwear L.L.C. — that sells the shoes. The company’s only listed address is the small office in Montana of the lawyer who registered the entity.
In March, Mr. Trump mixed his appeal to Christian evangelical voters with a pitch for a customized Bible. Created with the country singer Lee Greenwood, the Bible includes copies of foundational American documents and the lyrics to Mr. Greenwood’s best-known song, “God Bless the U.S.A.”
In a promotional video, Mr. Trump offered a twist on the primary slogan of his three campaigns — “We must make America pray again” — and struck a note that resonated with many evangelicals. He described “Judeo-Christian values” as “under attack, perhaps as never before,” and added: “We must defend God in the public square and not allow the media or the left-wing groups to silence, censor or discriminate against us.”
The webpage offering the Bible said no portion of the $59.99 sale price would go to any political campaign. Mr. Trump’s personal company, however, would receive a licensing fee. “This Bible,” he said, “is a reminder that the biggest thing we have to bring back, America, to make America great again, is our religion.”
Like Father, Like Sons
As president, Mr. Trump monetized the office in smaller ways, though most of it was hidden from public view. A 2020 New York Times investigation based on his tax returns found that he had pocketed millions of dollars from Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida, after increasing initiation fees when he became a candidate. Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties also saw substantial business from groups with an interest in currying the president’s favor; since then, Mar-a-Lago has increasingly become a venue of choice for events and speakers on the MAGA right. Mr. Trump has sold hats and other goods bearing his name or “Make America Great Again,” to raise money both for his campaign and for personal profit.
The Trump family business has since become increasingly oriented toward helping the patriarch win in November. Mr. Trump’s two eldest sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, together ran the business after their father became president, though Donald Jr. appears to have pulled back in recent years. Both now spend much time working to energize their father’s voter base, and they, too, appear to be cashing in on their his campaign messages.
Last year, Donald Jr. signed an exclusive deal to post his “Triggered” podcast on Rumble, a digital platform popular on the right. Axios reported that he would receive more than $1 million from Rumble. Donald Jr. regularly uses the forum to describe his father as unjustly under attack.
Donald Jr. also recently became an official endorser of Birch Gold Group, a company that converts traditional investments in retirement accounts to gold, a major push among conservatives. In a video announcing the deal in April, Donald Jr. cited “Biden inflation” as reasons to switch investments to gold.
On friendly television programs and in speaking engagements, Eric Trump speaks publicly far more to attack his father’s perceived political enemies than to promote the family’s golf courses. He appeared recently at a megachurch in Detroit for a ReAwaken America rally, part of a pro-Trump Christian nationalist tour in which tickets typically sell for up to $500 and speakers are paid.
Eric spoke for 30 minutes, complaining that his father had actually won the 2020 election and had been treated unfairly by a “crooked elite establishment,” including the prosecutor and the judge in the Manhattan criminal case, unsupportive Republicans, a “corrupt as hell” Department of Justice and F.B.I., social media and mainstream media.
“They’ve weaponized the entire system,” he said.
‘Full Patriot Economy’
Mr. Trump’s political persecution mantra has recently been molded into something of a business plan at Trump Media. The chief executive, Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California with little prior business experience, has offered little in the way of plans to increase the company’s tiny revenues but much about his unproven suspicions that Mr. Trump’s enemies are illegally suppressing the price of the company’s stock.
In a series of letters, he asked his former congressional colleagues and the Nasdaq stock exchange to investigate possible illegal short selling. He made similar requests to the attorneys general in Florida and Louisiana, “red states, where you have the rule of law,” he said.
“We have one of the biggest brands in the last 100 years with Donald Trump,” Mr. Nunes said during a recent interview posted on Rumble. “But at the same time, there’s a lot of haters out there.”
The focus on investigations represents a return to form for Mr. Nunes, who made a name for himself in Congress by leading investigations into perceived Democratic-engineered conspiracies, from the purported coverup of fatal security lapses at American government buildings in Benghazi, Libya, to the “Ukraine impeachment hoax” of Mr. Trump.
Trading under the symbol “DJT,” Trump Media’s stock price has fluctuated wildly since the company went public in March, from a high of nearly $80 a share to occasionally trading below $25. The stock closed on Thursday at $29.86.
There are a host of nonconspiratorial reasons for the stock’s troubles.
Trump Media reported losses last year of $58 million. This year, first-quarter revenues totaled only $770,000, putting Trump Media on pace to record far less revenue than a typical Chick-fil-A restaurant, notwithstanding a market capitalization greater than Alaska Airlines.
The company has only 36 employees and is based in a small office in Sarasota, Fla. Its only significant product, Truth Social, has not broken through the crowded social media landscape. Only one million unique users visited the site in April, according to the internet tracker Similarweb, and overall traffic in May was lower than the same month last year.
The company recently said it planned to use some of the more than $350 million it had raised by going public and in related transactions to buy other companies and expand into video streaming, with the goal of reaching the “full patriot economy” and not being “held captive by woke corporations.”
Mr. Nunes has said his letter-writing campaign sought to protect the roughly 620,000 retail investors in Trump Media. But no one would benefit more from keeping the stock price high than Mr. Trump himself. His stake is currently worth about $3.4 billion — at least on paper. He cannot sell any shares until late September without special dispensation by the company’s board of directors. Though the board is crowded with Trump acolytes, unloading shares could push down the stock price and draw shareholder lawsuits.
So far, however, some Trump Media shareholders appear to have embraced the blurring of lines between Mr. Trump’s campaign messaging and his income.
Chad Nedohin, a part-time preacher who lives in Canada and runs a chat group for Trump Media shareholders, recently began a livestream on Rumble with a prayer for the Trump family and Mr. Nunes, who he said “are fighting against evil financial powers.”
At a recent stop on the ReAwaken America tour in Detroit, where Eric Trump also spoke, Clay Clark, the Oklahoman who runs the for-profit Christian nationalist roadshow, introduced an employee of his named James who had invested most of his income in Trump Media stock. Speaking to the crowd, James drew a direct connection between good citizenship and Mr. Trump’s wealth.
“We all know that big tech and the fake news media are doing everything that they can to destroy our country,” James said. “And we have to fight back. And we have to put President Trump not only back in the White House, but now we have an opportunity to make him the richest person in the whole world through the stock DJT.”
The crowd cheered.
The post Martyr Inc.: How Trump Monetized a Persecution Narrative appeared first on New York Times.
