- Slug: BC-CNS-Fake Electors Merch. 600 words. By Amaia J. Gavica.
- Photos available (thumbnails, captions below).
By Amaia J. Gavica
Cronkite News
MILWAUKEE – At street corners all around the Republican National Convention, vendors have set up shop with merchandise that celebrates Donald Trump.
Beneath large white tents, tables are piled high with T-shirts, mugs, hats and more with the former president’s likeness. On the streets, individuals sell magnets with the words, “You’re killing us Joe.”
“We’ve been selling Trump merchandise since before President Trump took office,” said Anthony Montgomery, a South Carolinian making sales to lines of people under large tents near the Fiserv Forum in downtown Milwaukee.
“We’ve been pushing ever since to keep the Trump train moving,” he added.
Among the usual selection of red MAGA hats, Montgomery proudly displayed T-shirts on mannequins.
His favorite reads, “I’m Voting for the Convicted Felon,” a nod to Trump’s 34-count conviction in a New York trial related to hush-money payments on the eve of the 2016 election – and to Republicans’ view the trial was politically motivated.
Montgomery’s $30 T-shirts are being sold two blocks away from the arena where delegates gather to cheer speakers and jostle for a glimpse of Trump. Montgomery said he is on the “guest list” to get into the security perimeter.
His other T-shirts follow a similar theme, with one featuring Trump’s mug shot and the word “Wanted” above it. Below, it read, “Never Surrender” and “For President.”
On Wednesday, two new designs arrived.
These T-shirts feature photos of Trump from Saturday night’s rally in Pennsylvania, blood dripping down his face and his fist in the air after an assassination attempt. Both shirts feature an American flag. One has the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!” – the rallying cry Trump led before Secret Service agents whisked him away.
Montgomery said he wants the shirt to highlight “the fact that they missed.”
Within politics, turning a profit from a controversial event is a time-honored tradition.
About 90 minutes after Trump was booked in an Atlanta jail last year on charges of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, his campaign was marketing merchandise with his mug shot on it.
State Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale – one of the 11 fake electors who face charges in Arizona over the effort to shift the state’s Electoral College votes to Trump, despite his loss to President Joe Biden by over 10,000 votes – said he followed the former president’s lead when he started offering defendant-themed items.
T-shirts with Kern’s mug shot and the words, “Indicted Trump Elector” sell for $28 on his campaign website.
“It definitely lightens up the sham indictment that Kris Mayes did,” said Kern, referring to the state attorney general who brought the charges.
“The voters, especially in Arizona and across the nation, see the lawfare that is being done by the Democrats and the Democrat Party, and it’s going to backfire on them big time,” Kern said. “Be careful what you wish for, Democrats, because Republicans are going to win across the board in this next election.”
Kern’s shirts weren’t on display in Milwaukee.
But souvenir hunters had plenty of other options, such as a 300-page hardcover book filled with Trump’s tweets converted into poetry. It’s titled “Collected Poems of Donald J. Trump.” The book sells for $45 to symbolize the fact that Trump was the 45th president.
Ian Pratt and his partner, Gregory Woodman, created the book and sell it online, too, at Trumppoetry.com.
“We believe that Donald Trump is the greatest poet of our time,” said Pratt, who’s from Nashville, “and has done more to expand the usage and the understanding of the English language than any other writer alive.”
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