News moves fast following shocking events. But the hustlers trying to make a quick buck might move even faster.
Within hours of a shooter attempting to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally on Saturday, countless products emblazoned with an image of Trump, bloodied and fist raised, were for sale on e-commerce platforms. A shirt on Temu with an image from the rally and the words “TRUMP BULLETPROOF” is for sale for $9.59. (One person died at the rally and two were critically injured.) On Amazon, many of the top-selling men’s novelty T-shirts are nearly identical: some version of an image of Trump at the rally, alongside phrases like “FIGHT!” and “NEVER SURRENDER.”
Take sellers on Etsy, the platform that largely focuses on craft goods and indie products. One shop on the platform offers apparel with slogans and designs that otherwise seem fairly innocent: sweatshirts with animated smiling ghosts for Halloween and camping-themed apparel. Also listed in the shop are shirts promoting gay rights and indigenous identities. In the last few days, though, the shop has pushed out various pro-Trump products, including several with imagery from the rally.
A search for “Trump” on Etsy returns a slew of listings for other similar products — almost all of which feature photos of mockups of products, not actual physical items, suggesting these are print-on-demand operations endlessly churning out whatever people are looking for. And right now, some people are apparently looking for bloody, post-assassination T-shirts of questionable taste.
Etsy didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether products with this imagery violate rules around violent content.
Other sellers are capitalizing on the moment in even more obvious ways: one brand on Amazon — creatively named Trump Fist Bumped Shirt — sells a half-dozen T-shirts all in the same vein, ranging from $13 to $19. Amazon also did not respond to requests about whether this type of product was allowed on its marketplace, which allows third-party vendors to sell their merchandise.
Any enterprising sellers with two free minutes and a Redbubble account can get in on the action — and so far, platforms seem willing to accommodate the merch. And if there’s money to be made, you can bet someone out there will try to make it.