A new cryptocurrency platform. An upcoming memoir authored by his wife. A set of NFT trading cards. Watches that cost as much as $100,000.
With just weeks left before the November election, former President Donald Trump has taken to promoting items and businesses that are not at all connected to his presidential campaign.
“You’re going to love them,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform last week of his new line of branded watches, which cost anywhere from $499 to $100,000. They’re being offered through a vendor that has a licensing agreement with him. “Would make a great Christmas gift.”
While running for president this cycle, Trump has also promoted a sneaker brand, boots and even Bibles — all of which are business and not campaign ventures. He has long mixed business with politics; prior to his legal battles that have raged for years now, those potential conflicts of interest were the subject of far greater attention.
But the fact that Trump is promoting his business interests again in the closing weeks of the campaign has his Democratic rivals saying it is proof he is unfocused, and even some of his allies saying the effort is unwise.
“I think that he’s distracted,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, told NBC News. “He’s off his message and he’s probably focused on what comes next after he loses the presidential race, which is to continue to try to perpetuate these dicey schemes on people for his own profit.”
Reached for comment, a Trump campaign official said “these are all outside business ventures,” adding that “no proceeds come to the campaign.”
For the former president’s supporters, it’s unlikely the focus on these other ventures would shift their opinion of him, even though Trump was subject to some conservative backlash in 2022 when he first announced an NFT line, teasing it as a “MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT” soon after he launched his re-election bid.
“I’m not too much worried about that,” Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., said. “Donald Trump is a businessman first, second and third. But his primary focus, purpose, focus number one, two, three, four, five, is running for president and making our country great again. That’s his focus.”
“Everybody has things that we’re involved in personally,” he added. “You have members of Congress who write books and then promote the books. So, I mean, I’m not really concerned about that.”
But others felt it highlighted a bigger issue with the state of Trump’s candidacy, specifically that difficult conversations aren’t being had.
“It’s just the lack of discipline around him right now,” one Trump ally said. “There is no one telling him ‘no’ very clearly. Do I think that a single Trump voter in America is not voting for him because of any of this? Absolutely no. But they still haven’t [really] told people [why] Kamala Harris would be a bad president. And that seems like it should probably be the messaging priority.”
Within the last week, Trump tweeted about how he “promised to Make America Great Again, this time with crypto,” in announcing that his new platform, World Liberty Financial, now had a “whitelist for eligible persons” open. And ahead of the release of former first lady Melania Trump’s new book, “Melania,” Trump promoted a link to her website calling on supporters to “Buy your copy today.”
In February, Trump attended a shoe convention in Philadelphia to announce the release of a new line of Trump-branded sneakers. Meanwhile, his latest financial disclosure showed that he made $300,000 off of Trump-branded Bibles he promoted earlier this year. That same financial disclosure revealed he made about $7.2 million from the NFTs he promoted.
The Harris campaign sees Trump’s side hustles during the campaign as bolstering a core part of their message about him: that he is more focused on helping himself than on helping voters.
“He is making the argument for our campaign,” a Harris campaign official said. “And he’s making the argument to the American people of who he cares about, day in and day out. And we’ll let that speak for itself.”
Describing the business ventures as a “grift,” the official went further, saying of Trump’s latest branded merchandise: “It’s just objectively an ugly watch.”
Long before he entered politics, Trump had promoted similar product lines, whether Trump Steaks or Trump Vodka. Trump ended up paying out a $25 million settlement to students of Trump University — the former president’s real estate education venture — who said they were duped.
Trump’s new watch line contributed to the resurfacing of remarks Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., made during a 2016 GOP primary debate, during which Rubio said Trump inherited hundreds of millions of dollars and that if he hadn’t, “you know where he’d be right now? Selling watches in Manhattan.”
“He wants to do everything and anything and throw everything against the wall,” the Trump ally said. “Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it helps you. Sometimes we’re posting NFTs or whatever.”
“No one is saying, ‘Hey, sir, why don’t we not do that right now?’” this person added. “And that just seems to be the only reasonable explanation for this right now.”
