New York/Hong Kong: The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has ignited a surge in online merchandise featuring an image of the U.S. presidential candidate moments after the attack, adorned with slogans like “Bulletproof”, “Legends Never Die”, “Grazed but not Dazed”, and “Shooting Makes Me Stronger”.
T-shirts featuring Trump raising his fist defiantly amidst blood streaks are selling rapidly, priced from approximately $9 to $40, driving a frenzy among businesses and independent sellers to capitalize on the incident.
“(The sales) exceeded my expectations. I didn’t expect that Trump would have so many fans,” said Zhong Jiachi, 28, owner of Paxinico, a clothing merchant on Douyin (Chinese TikTok), who sold about 40 T-shirts within 24 hours featuring the post-shooting image of Trump.
Li Jinwei, 25, who sells merchandise on Alibaba’s Taobao platform, recounted how quickly they responded to the news: “We put the T-shirts on Taobao as soon as we saw the news about the shooting, though we hadn’t even printed them, and within three hours we saw more than 2,000 orders from both China and the United States.”
The image of Trump defiantly facing a camera, reminiscent of his stance in “The Apprentice”, has become iconic and is now emblazoned across various products, from T-shirts to posters, reflecting both support and criticism.
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In 2023, a multitude of Trump merchandise, including T-shirts, shot glasses, mugs, posters, and bobblehead dolls, quickly emerged following a host of incidents involving the former president.
Supporters and campaigners swiftly embraced the image captured just after the shooting, rallying around Trump as he continues to campaign ahead of the November 5 U.S. presidential election. The incident occurred during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a pivotal state in the upcoming election, where Trump was struck in the right ear and left bloodied.
