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Announcing the Tesla White House sales event of the century [1]
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Date: 2025-03-20
America’s president hawks merch from the White House and wonders why people outside MAGAloathe him.
A quick peak at Trump’s online store simultaneously lowers the prestige of the presidency and raises the blood pressure. GetTrumpWatches.com offers a collection suitable for front row seating at a WWE match, including Trump’s “Inauguration Blue Meteor.” The gold plated watch has a shiny blue background with red and blue stones circling the numbers; Trump’s giant signature takes up half the bottom. One waits for the matching pinky ring.
Nothing says regressive tax like milking the poor of their rent checks with several mock-America watch options: There’s the American Eagle, the American Flag, Trump Victory Dance and the Trump Mugshot. Wait for Trump to imbed threads from the suit he was wearing for his first assassination attempt; ‘God’s Chosen’ will be a must-have time piece, stigmata optional.
The grift and risks are obvious
Trump sells his presidential brand, along with his Bibles and Bitcoin scheme, to anyone who can pay. Nothing prevents a Saudi prince or Russian dictator from buying a thousand gold plated watches for a cool $100,000 per, for Trump’s “Crypto President Tourbillon.” Trump overtly solicits bribes markets the watch to the creepy crypto set:
“Alright, crypto kings—it’s time to flex your status. The Crypto President Tourbillon isn’t just a watch; it’s a total power move. Designed for the Crypto pioneers, this limited-edition masterpiece celebrates Bitcoin, President Trump, and your unstoppable climb to the moon… 18K Gold Flex: This bad boy is crafted from 200 grams of solid 18K gold—because why stop at stacking Bitcoin when you can stack gold too?”
Whether Menendez taught Trump about bars of gold or it worked in reverse, selling greed as a virtue never sounded less presidential or more corrupt.
Trump is blatantly using the office of the presidency to peddle his crypto scheme. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Trump’s family wants a financial stake in the U.S. arm of crypto exchange Binance, which would put Trump in business with a firm that pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering requirements. No doubt Trump will throw in a pardon to sweeten the deal.
Trump and his protected species-slaughtering sons are attracted to crypto, the black market currency, because it is completely decentralized and unregulated, and has no backing from any bank or the US government. It is an untraceable get rich quick scheme as Trump, yet again, flexes mob boss to the world and wants it to genuflect. Wait for an Executive Order devaluing the dollar to a penny and replacing US currency with crypto, which will expand Trump and Musks’ wealth exponentially.
Funny, yes, but also dangerous
Even if the laughter isn’t raucous, it’s there, waiting just below the bile rising in your throat. Obviously, selling private, for profit presidential merchandise to foreign actors seeking influence violates the long-standing Emoluments Clause. But somehow, next to Trump’s $1 million Mar-a-Lago club membership fees, it looks quaint.
In 2023, House Democrats on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability released a report detailing the extent of President Donald Trump’s corruption during his first term. “White House for Sale: How Princes, Prime Ministers, and Premiers Paid Off President Trump” documented more than $7.8 million in payments to Trump from the leaders of foreign states, including some of the world’s most brutal regimes.
The report, online access to which is now “forbidden by administrative rules,” only reflected what the committee was able to find; we will never know what they didn’t find, and the grift tally did not include up to $640 million that went to his daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
And now, an American president sells cars from the White House lawn
The setting was ripe for Elon Musk. Trump gave the world’s richest man the power to regulate his own regulators, and Musk rose to the task with alacrity. At the time of Musk’s DOGE takeover, at least 11 federal agencies had begun more than 32 major investigations into Musk’s regulatory violations including environmental pollution, car crash safety, and labor irregularities. Even the USAID office Musk shuttered was investigating Starlink’s practices in Ukraine.
In all, Musk’s companies hold over 100 contracts with 17 different federal agencies, and Musk is kneecapping most regulatory staff with Trump’s blessing. Musk is diligently converting his $280 million investment in Trump’s election into billions.
To counter the growing backlash against Musk, last week Trump held a White House car sales event where the comedic spoof wrote itself in a funny, must-see commercial. Lavishing “Patriot” Musk with praise to encourage MAGA to buy Teslas, Trump lined up five Teslas in the White House driveway. He then took to Truth Social to demonize Musk protestors, and is now threatening them, posting that “Radical Left Lunatics” were attempting to “illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the World’s great automakers, and Elon’s baby.” Two happy take aways here: 1. The Tesla protests are getting under their thin, collective skins, so much so that Trump wants to arrest the protesters; and 2. Trump can’t do anything about it, at least not while we still have a First Amendment.
The why of it all
Trump and Musk are padding their wallets even as they hammer attack the government. It seems odd to benefit so deeply from the US while working so hard to kill her.
Trump and Musk want Americans to believe that government is both corrupt and inept, that it is fundamentally incapable of functioning, so that private industry can step in. It’s an oligarchs’ heist. It’s also a PR heist, built on Trump’s false claim that he inherited a “terrible” economy from Biden, when in fact he inherited the strongest post-covid economy in the world.
Globetrotting heirs, crypto billionaires, and venture capitalists furiously resent answering to anyone, and government regulators, pre-Trump, expected answers. Regulations that restrict and monitor air and water pollution, demand fair labor practices, or impose transparency on finance are serious irritants to rich corporations: they dent profits, and don’t-get-them started on taxes.
Make no mistake, the oligarchs’ takeover is here, yoked on the lowest common denominator, where Trump polls best.
When a golden calf wearing a red tie replaces the Washington monument, maybe Canada will take pity and let 75 million of us in.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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