Once a grifter, always a grifter

In his first significant public move since opening his 2024 presidential campaign last month, Mr. Trump announced an online store to sell $99 digital trading cards of himself as a superhero, an astronaut, an Old West sheriff and a series of other fantastical figures. He made his pitch in a brief, direct-to-camera video in which he audaciously declared that his four years in the White House were “better than Lincoln, better than Washington.”

[...]

Trump’s direct pitch for the trading cards underscored how secondary his campaign for president has seemed to his personal efforts over the last month.

For a day, Republicans and even some Democrats speculated about what Mr. Trump might have planned for his major announcement, assuming it related to his campaign or even the race for House speaker. The disbelief at the ultimate announcement was palpable.

[...]

“Man, when all Patriots are looking for is hope for the future of our country and Trump hypes everybody up with a ‘BIG ANNOUNCEMENT’ then drops a low-quality NFT collection video as the ‘announcement,’ it just pushes people away,” [...] Keith and Kevin Hodge, two Trump supporters and stand-up comedians, posted on Twitter.

  NYT

We can only hope.

The digital trading cards cost far more than the $20 that Mr. Trump often asks his supporters to contribute.

But Mr. Trump’s campaign won’t earn any money from the digital cards, which he describes as akin to baseball cards but are actually nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, that effectively allow a person to claim ownership of a digital file.

Money from the digital cards will instead be pocketed by Mr. Trump under a licensing deal, a fact that some of his aides acknowledged and expressed concern about. They worry that the move could dilute small-dollar donations to his presidential effort.

He never cared about that possibility before. I doubt it will bother him now. He's always interested in funneling campaign money into his own pockets.

The website promises that buyers of cards will be entered in a sweepstakes “for a chance to win 1000’s of incredible prizes and meet the one and only #45!” Fine print on the site indicates that the sum value of all the prizes is $54,695 but also states that the dollar value for a 20-minute meeting with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago is “priceless.” It also indicates that winners of face-to-face meetings will have to cover their own travel and lodging costs to get to Mar-a-Lago.

LOL.  Tell it to "the President".

I'll wait for the orange jumpsuit trading cards, thanks.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

LOL.

Baked Alaska

UPDATE:  Was this NOT the "big announcement"? WTF?

Come on.  If he didn't mean the grift to be the announcement, he shouldn't have posted it when he did.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:  "MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT"    Nice try, Dinesh.

It would be hilarious if this stupid grift was the thing that breaks Trump mania.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

I'm guessing the rubes that bought them didn't even know what they are.

Also, it's not just the NFTs he's hawking this Christmas...