Donald Trump and the Golden Sneakers
Could selling cheap kicks for big bucks be the new financial plan?
On Saturday, only hours after hearing from Judge Arthur Engeron that he owed the state of New York $345 million plus interest (which could amount to almost $100 million), Donald Trump went to Philadelphia to launch a new line of Trump-branded sneakers. You can buy these shoes in “Red Wave” red or “POTUS 45” white for $199, or you can spring for the special, limited edition “Never Surrender” gold for $399. Except you can’t, because 1000 pairs of Never Surrender kicks allegedly sold out in two hours. You can see all this junk (including Victory 47 men’s cologne and women’s perfume for a mere, smear $99 a bottle. (Free shipping included: You can see the whole display here.)
Hilariously, each item says in small type underneath the image of what you are purchasing: “The images shown are for illustration purposes only and may not be an exact representation of the product.” Buy two or more items and you will receive a free pair of shoelaces, “an exclusive Trump superhero charm,” and an invitation to a sneaker launch party: “Date TBD. (No guarantee President Trump will attend.)”
I would bet money that “President” Trump will not attend. First, because he actually hates being around ordinary people; and second, because he has a history of offering people stuff and hten hoping they forget. For several years—in the sun up to the 2020 election and then raising money for his legal defense fund Save America PAC after he was defeated by Joe Biden, the Former Guy has advertised a promotion where a small dollar donor is chosen to have a meal with Trump: no one has ever won.
Here’s another tidbit: the small print at the bottom of the web page says that these trinkets are marketed by CIC Ventures LLC, which has licensed Trump’s name, but that “Trump sneakers are not designed, manufactured, or sold by Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization, or any of their respective affiliates or principles.” And further down: “GetTrumpSneakers.com is not political and has nothing to do with any political campaign.”
Yet CIC Ventures LLC (CIC surely stands for “Commander in Chief”) is located in West Palm Beach, Florida, less than five miles from Mar-A-Lago. A little sleuthing reveals that the street address, 3505 Summit Blvd, West Palm Beach, FL 33406, is otherwise known as the Trump International Golf Club. But I’m sure it has nothing to do with Trump and his campaign…right?
The cons that Donald Trump has run on the suckers who do business with him, from bankers to tourists to voters, are so vast and various that they are hard to count. No pocket is too small to pick (go to the Trump Organization Store, if you don’t believe me.) Last Friday’s judgement (which, if you add the $4 million apiece Don Jr. and Eric were fined, and the two E. Jean Carroll cases for $88.3 million, come up to almost half a billion dollars before legal fees) was the biggest rebuke to date.
The first setback was the Trump University scam, decided against the Fraudster in Chief in 2016 for a mere $25 million. Founded in 2004, TU promised students that they would learn how to make money in real estate from instructors and materials “hand picked” by Trump.
That, of course, was a lie. But the lie tells you as much about our regulatory system as it does about Trump and the poor fools whose pockets he picked. Although the State of New York warned Trump University from the beginning that it couldn’t advertise itself as a “university” because it had no state license to do so, despite mounting student complaints, regulators did not shut it down until 2011. If, as Aaron Rupar put it, when Donald Trump steals, he steals from everybody, he can do that because the state has not had the resources (or perhaps the will) to follow every Trump con where it leads.
As Trump University lumbered to a well-deserved death, Trump took to marketing all kinds of other garbage by putting his name in it. There was Trump Ice (2005-2010; it’s bottled water), Trump Vodka (2005-2011; it’s still sold in Israel because it’s kosher), and Trump Steaks (May-July, 2007; “wholly mediocre,” according to Gourmet magazine.)
So, it’s hard to imagine that if you actually wear Trump sneakers they won’t fall apart instantly, although for those of you who aren’t up to date on these things: many sneakers are made to be collected, not worn. Sneaker collecting is now a multi-billion dollar industry: a pair of Nike x Yeezys that Kanye West wore to the 2008 Grammys were sold in 2019 for $1.8 million.
You can see where this is going: it’s a classic Don Con. Trump either licenses his name for a product, hotel, or service; or he markets an inferior product himself under the Trump brand. The inference is that because everything he touches turns to gold, that people who purchase these things can either enjoy a taste of Trump-style luxury, or they will have an item that is an excellent investment.
But you may ask yourself—how can 1000 pairs of Trump sneakers, even at $399 a pair (that would be about $400,000, math-challenged friends), help a man who is at least $500 million down, with ten months in the year to go?
Well, it doesn’t, unless the sneakers, cologne, and whatever other products follow are a vehicle, not for making money, but hiding it.
Let me explain.
The Trump Organization was founded as a real estate firm. In many ways, that’s still what it is, although the company no longer builds, but mostly manages their own and other people’s properties. And what do we know about real estate? It’s one of the main vehicles for laundering stolen and illicitly earned money, which is why on February 7, 2024, the U.S. Treasury rolled out a new set of regulations requiring all-cash purchases of real estate to reveal their owners. Between 2016 and 2021, a minimum $2.6 billion was laundered through real estate deals in the United States alone, with New York and Miami as the epicenters. By 2019, trillions of pounds worth of London real estate were also “washing dirty money clean,” as an old friend of mine (now deceased) who worked as an agent for Russian oligarchs told me.
The point of money laundering is this: your investments don’t have to make money. If you have an income stream that you cannot legally reveal, putting it into money losing enterprises is as good as anything else, because otherwise you would have no access to that money at all.
And the history of the Trump organization is the history of losing money.
Let me float this idea. Trump now has a money problem. It isn’t just legal judgements that are soaking up his available cash and bleeding his various PACs and Super PACs; he spent $50 million in campaign money on legal bills in 2023 and is on track to spend much more in 2024, because appeals is more expensive than the original defense. The other problem is that not just that Trump and his family will no longer be in charge of the Trump organization, but that Judge Engeron imposed another penalty: an independent court monitor. This means they can’t move money around inside the corporation.
In other words, for the first time ever, there will be someone whose job it is to make sure the Trump Organization not just follows the law, but also doesn’t turn foreign money into American money that can then be legally used for a political campaign. My take? Prepare to see a raft of new “businesses” arising in other states, states even less well-regulated than New York, from which cheap Trump-branded goods will be allegedly sold in massive quantities, perhaps never delivered, and the money ending up in the slushiest of funds. Rememebr: PACs and Super PACs do not have to say who their donors are—could be pillow companies, sneaker companies—as long as the money is American.
On that note, will it surprise you to learn that, according to the New York Post, the autographed Never Back Down golden sneakers auctioned at SneakerCon went to the Russian CEO of the multi-million dollar company Luxury Bazaar, Roman Scharf?
Of course it wouldn’t.
What I’m listening to:
A new conversation podcast about gender, politics, and power called The Amendment. The podcast is a weekly conversation hosted by Errin Haines, an editor at large at The 19th. It’s a must-hear to stay in touch with underrepresented American voters: I loved the first episode with Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Short takes:
It turns out the “Trump Brand” may not be worth much, at least when it comes to New York City real estate, because New Yorkers don’t want to like in a building with the Former Guy’s name on it. According to Rukmini Callimachi of The New York Times, data from two real estate tracking firms shows that “buildings emblazoned with Mr. Trump’s name have underperformed” since 2016. Significantly: prices dropped below market average as much as four percent in one year. “By contrast, condominiums in four buildings where the Trump logo was removed at the behest of residents — sometimes after a legal battle,” Callimachi writes, “have seen their value shoot back up.” (February 18, 2024)
RFK, Jr. is popular with anti-vaxxers, but what’s the demographic where he really scores? The 18-34 vote, and particularly young men, who see his masculinity and wealth as something the current economic system has shut them out of. This pehnomenon “bears careful scrutiny,” Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Ilyse Hogue write at MSNBC.com. “Kennedy’s popularity is concentrated in the podcasts and blogs that make up the “manosphere”—a medium he has committed to dominate —at the same time growing evidence indicates young men are gravitating rightward politically and feeling disaffected socially.” Without serious attention to the real grievances behind male alienation, this generation could be lost to politics. “While GOP policies have arguably only intensified this alienation, the far right has seized the role as the savior of “real men” from the clutches of feminists and nanny-state liberals.” (February 18, 2024)
I have been making noise about this for some time, but it seems like the idea is gaining traction: Donald Trump’s legal problems are becoming a serious impediment to a a key campaign metric: cash on hand. “Former President Donald Trump has already spent more than $50 million in donor contributions on his own legal bills in 2023. Now, his four upcoming criminal trials are threatening to empty out his PAC accounts with still nine months to go before election day,” writes Carl Gibson at National Memo. “The super PAC he's been using to pay his lawyers—MAGA, Inc.—has less than $27 million left, with Trump still having to pay for legal representation for criminal trials in Manhattan, US District Courts in Florida and Washington, DC and in Fulton County, Georgia all while still running a nationwide presidential campaign.” Where is he going to get the money? HIs personal wealth seems shaky right now—and if the Republican National Committee forks it over, how do they finance House and Senate races? (February 17, 2024)
Bravo! A great read. The Art of the Don unpacked.