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By now, everyone knows that Donald Trump's latest money-making scheme is Trump-branded shoes (the first run of which have sold out). Presumably, everyone also knows that the price tag was very high ($400), the quality is very low, and the tacky factor is off the charts. Just in case you haven't seen them:
It is very hard to imagine the type of person who would want to run around with those on their feet. Though it's also clear that some sizable chunk of the 1,000 purchasers are actually looking to re-sell the shoes, not to wear them. On eBay, many sellers are asking for four or five figures, with a top ask of $30,000. Remarkably, that last seller isn't even going to throw in free shipping. Once you've laid out your 30K, you're still $61.84 away from having shoes in hand.
In any event, the shoes are so hideous, and the use of the presidency to hawk such shoes is so gauche, that Trump has been roundly mocked on social media and on late-night TV since the sneakers were unveiled. And we thought that the best way to share that, for schadenfreude purposes, was to present the 10 best suggested names we've seen for the shoes. And so:
There are some pretty creative people out there.
If you would like a bit more schadenfreude, then we will also pass along a story brought to our attention by reader L.S.-H. in Naarden, The Netherlands. David Hogg, survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, and now a prominent political activist, had the foresight to squat on a couple of obvious domain names. And he's up for a deal, as he announced on Ex-Twitter:
Dear Trump team-
I own BOTH http://ShopTrumpShoes.com AND http://TrumpSneakers.com I will sell it to you for the small amount of $2M to be donated to March For Our Lives. But every 25,000 more calls via the site the price goes up 1M. Please DM for ACH instructions.
Hogg has since acquired shoptrumpsneakers.com, which he's set to redirect to an anti-gun-violence website.
And finally, to round it out with some schadenfreude whipped cream, it is well within the realm of possibility that Trump's attempt to raise some money to pay off his lawsuits is... going to trigger another lawsuit. Because the former president is working with a small-time operator to make the shoes, as opposed to an actual professional operation, nobody involved noticed, it would seem, that red soles are already a trademark of top-flight designer Christian Louboutin:
Louboutin pretty famously made his first pair of red-soled shoes with his secretary's nail polish, and he's defended the trademark in court several times. There's no evidence he or his company have filed suit against Trump yet, but it's only been a week, so there's time. (Z)