E-commerce sites sell souvenir T-shirts of Trump’s shooting
Just over two hours after news of former US president Donald Trump being shot at a rally reverberated around the world, e-commerce platforms began selling T-shirts with the image of the defiant leader.
The T-shirts feature what is going to be an iconic image of the presumptive presidential nominee for the Republican party – a defiant Trump pumping his fist in the air with blood dripping down his cheek from his right ear.
The first batch went on sale on Chinese e-commerce platform Taobao at 8.40pm Eastern Time, reported Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper South China Morning Post (SCMP).
That was slightly over two hours after the Associated Press released the iconic picture at 6.31pm.
One of the Taobao’s sellers, Ms Li Jinwei, told SCMP: “We put the T-shirts on Taobao as soon as we saw the news about the shooting, though we hadn’t even printed them, and within three hours, we saw more than 2,000 orders from both China and the US.”
Trump narrowly escaped an attempt on his life when a bullet went through his right ear during a campaign rally on July 13.
Investigators said that they were still probing the motives of 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was shot dead by snipers at the event in Butler, Pennsylvania, after firing multiple shots with a legally bought semi-automatic rifle.
Ms Li said that for the 2024 presidential elections, she made souvenirs featuring Trump only due to his popularity with the Chinese people and because “he has a higher chance of winning the election”.
Similar T-shirts are also being sold on Lazada and Shopee from $15.
Small-time businesses in the US are also capitalising on the incident and featuring the same image to sell their wares.
A seller on the print-on-demand marketplace Redbubble has 71 items for sale, including sweatshirts, caps, tote bags, mouse pads, laptop sleeves, mobile phone cases, clocks, duvet covers, shower curtains, aprons, notebooks and cushions.
All these were going for between US$1.03 (S$1.40) and US$104.91.
American stand-up comedy and conservative political commentary duo HodgeTwins promoted on X a black T-shirt with an image of a defiant-fisted Trump with the words “Fight! Fight! Fight!”.
The shirt is currently being sold on their official store from US$35 and the post has garnered 2.4 million views since it was posted on the morning of July 14.
“100 per cent of profits from this shirt go to Trump’s campaign,” the HodgeTwins said.
Potoshirt, a US-based online store for trending t-shirts also has apparel with similar images.
One shirt has the word “Undefeated”, while the other has the phrase “Shooting makes me stronger”. Another said “Fight”. All are being sold at US$22.95 each.
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