Dem
51
GOP
49
On Friday, we noted that Donald Trump has issued a set of digital trading cards (NFTs) that the rubes—sorry, investors—could buy for the low, low price of $99. How did it go? Fantastic! The complete collection of 44,000 cards sold out the first day, netting Trump (personally) over $4 million, assuming whoever made the "cards" was content to settle for $500,000 for a few days of design work. Actually, there were 45,000 cards; Trump kept 1,000 for himself since they are so beautiful. The cards are now available on the secondary market for $200, so anyone who bought a card for $99 and then flipped it for $200 made $101. And the smart investor who bought 10 or 100 cards made 10x or 100x more. So Trump created money for himself and some of his fans out of thin air. Wow!
Are Republicans of all stripes now finally seeing what a brilliant businessman he is? Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk also made a lot of money, but they had to produce actual products and services and that took quite a bit of time. Gates and Musk are now busy giving much of it away—albeit in somewhat different ways—but that is a different story.
Meanwhile, some of Trump's high-profile fans are not impressed. In fact, they are furious. Steve Bannon said of Trump's announcement: "I can't watch it again, make it stop." Radio host and Trump supporter John Cardillo said the whole thing was "beyond wrong," while noting the collapse of FTX. Michael Flynn said: "Whoever advised him on that, I'd fire him them immediately." Former White House advisers Sebastian Gorka and Steve Cortes were not amused. Gorka said: "Whoever wrote that pitch should be fired and should never be involved in any part of Trump's 2024 campaign." Cortes called for firing everyone at Mar-a-Lago, not just those involved in the NFT business. And they weren't the only ones. Maybe they didn't buy any of the cards and thus missed out on the quick profit and are jealous. They need to learn to move faster.
The Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post, which has become increasingly critical of Trump of late, ran an editorial headlined: "Don't give any money to con artist Trump." The first two paragraphs read:
When Donald Trump teased a "major announcement" Wednesday, the MAGA boards went crazy with speculation. He's going to be the next speaker of the House! He's enlisted Ron DeSantis to be his vice presidential candidate! He's finally found that voter fraud he's been promising for two years!
But no, it was a digital card collection of Trump dressed up like a superhero. In other words, another money grab.
Now take that in. A right-wing publication owned by Rupert Murdoch ran an editorial calling Trump a con artist. Needless to say, the editors of the Post had to have Murdoch's approval to run that. Criticizing Trump like that without approval from the top would be grounds for being fired instantly. So the Post is getting increasingly aggressive in going after Trump. The big question is this is some kind of trial balloon Murdoch is floating, or it is for real? If the latter, surely Fox will follow sooner or later and jump on the DeSantis bandwagon before too long. What will happen to Trump's base if the Fox hosts trash him every night and follow that up by announcing daily that DeSantis is the new leader of the Republican Party?
The money from the trading cards didn't go to Trump's campaign. There was a note on the site saying that "NFT INT LLC holds the copyright to all content." Further it says: "NFT INT LLC is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates." English translation: If the value of these things drops to zero shortly, please don't sue any of the above as it is not our fault."
One other thing. Where did the base images come from? In most cases, the designer just scoured the Internet for suitable base images and then Photoshopped Trump's head onto the base image. For example, Matthew Sheffield discovered that the base image for this card was taken from Shutterstock:
If the designer didn't pay Shutterstock the licensing fee, Trump is likely to get a call (and bill) from Shutterstock shortly. Any halfway decent Photoshop user can remove the Shutterstock logos and put in a different background and Trump's head in less than an hour. Other images were taken from amazon.com and various online stores. Not very classy, but for $99, you didn't expect the Mona Lisa, did you? (V)