One thing is that the design of clothing intended for the merchandising While politics is one of the most urgent branches of ready-to-wear, the incredible speed with which suppliers and vendors of the Republican National Convention, which was held in Milwaukee until Thursday, have reacted in recent days to the dizzying events is another.
In order to be able to buy all kinds of products with the definitive electoral ticket ―”Trump-Vance. Make America Great Again. 2024″″, it took less than 24 hours since the candidate lineup was finalized last Monday. And on Tuesday, some of the stands spread around the venue were already selling t-shirts, badges and unofficial decks of cards with the image that will last the longest of the thousands taken the previous Saturday after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, the one in which the former president can be seen in a virtually perfect composition emerging from the bodies of the Secret Service agents with his fist raised, his right ear bloodied and an American flag presiding over the scene.
There was a growing perception among some vendors and buyers that not enough time had passed to profit from the attempted murder. At one of the stalls inside the venue, white T-shirts with the photo were being snapped up for $40. At the stalls outside, whose businesses are fueled by pirated merchandise, slogans such as “Nothing will stop the MAGA movement” were added to the image. [por las siglas de Make America Great Again]”, “We will never give up” or “Teflon Don”, a reference to the nickname given to President Ronald Reagan for his toughness (like Teflon, the material used in frying pans). Reagan also survived an assassination attempt in 1981.
“I highly doubt that shirt will ever outsell the mugshot,” said Robin McNamara, president of Patriotic Shop, Inc. in Williamsburg, Virginia, after scrolling through photos on her cellphone of high-profile Florida politicians, including Trump, that demonstrate his Republican pedigree. The photo McNamara is referring to was taken of the former president at Fulton County Jail near Atlanta last August, when he was arraigned on charges of, among other things, leading a mafia-like conspiracy to alter the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. It is one of four pending lawsuits against him.
From Eisenhower to Obama
He merchandising The political slogan has a long tradition in the United States, dating back to the campaign buttons of the 1940s, which have their own healthy second-hand market, and one of its earliest and most famous milestones is the pin promoting the candidacy of Dwight Eisenhower (Republican president from 1953 to 1961) with a catchy “I Like Ike” (Ike being short for Dwight).
Knowing what’s happening outside means understanding what’s going to happen inside, so don’t miss anything.
KEEP READING
The campaign that brought Barack Obama to the White House in 2008, with his “Yes we can” slogan, marked a before and after. Although nothing can compare to the delirium and the sometimes surreal display of imagination that Trump brought from 2016 onwards.
It all started with what is still the star item, stainless steel. long-seller Trumpist: the red caps with the slogan MAGA, which stands for Make America Great Again, a phrase that Trump borrowed from Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign.
These caps were an unexpected hit in 2016. Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law and close collaborator during his first four years in the White House, recounted in his memoirs Breaking Historythat the design was Trump’s own doing,And Amanda Miller, head of marketing and communications for that historic campaign, ordered 100 units from the start, even though the boss had asked for a thousand. Very soon, Kushner also revealed, they were making $80,000 a day from cap sales alone.
In Milwaukee, the original design has been deployed in all its variations: from the gold-colored caps worn by many of the California delegates, the most numerous, to those with the numbers “45-47” on one side, for the number that Trump occupied on the list of American presidents the first time he occupied the White House and the one that awaits him if he wins the elections in November.
Trump’s campaign has leveraged the power of his brand to raise money, with products like a limited-edition set of playing cards that sold out as quickly as they became collector’s items and a pair of gold sneakers that sold out in a flash. 45Footwear, the same company that made those, announced the sale of an updated version in light of the latest events: the new ones are white, bear an image of Trump with his fist raised and the words he spoke on the stand after surviving Saturday’s attack: “Let’s fight! Let’s fight! Let’s fight!”
At one booth at the convention, a family business started by Obama, they sell a later edition of the gold version of the sneakers, “made in Vietnam,” for $300. At another, the Bible which Trump released earlier this year at a price of $60 with the title God Bless the USA Biblenamed for the ballad by country singer Lee Greenwood that Trump plays when he takes the stage at his rallies. Greenwood, who has been in Milwaukee all week, was signing copies and also selling an autographed guitar for $1,000.
A little further on, a pair of young men named Gregory Woodman and Ian Pratt had spread out on a table another bookish offering: a collection of poems that compiled tweets from when Trump was president and ruled the destiny of the world’s leading power at any time of day (and preferably in the early morning) by means of text on that social network. Pratt explained that they had not asked the former president’s permission, but that it was not necessary: “those tweets are in the public domain,” he added while opening the book to one of the pages where the verses draw whimsical shapes, in the manner of Apollinaire. The guys are also collecting signatures to force the appointment of the magnate as poet laureate of Congress. Asked if there was some irony in all this, Woodman replied: “Poetry is one of the most universal arts, and President Trump is capable of communicating very great things with words.”
The first volume of the complete works of “the greatest poet of his generation” costs $45 (another reference to the 45th U.S. presidency). Pratt and Goodman are preparing a second volume for when, if, he returns to the White House. You may not have guessed: that one will cost $47.
Follow all the information on the US elections atour weekly newsletter.
