Donald Trump has sold a lot of garbage that brandished his name over the years. Terrible steaks, ridiculous college courses, gaudy sneakers, and $60 public domain bibles, just to name a few. But Trump’s time selling NFT “trading cards,” may be his most ingenious ploy yet. Because his loyal band of followers will buy just about anything with his name or face on it. And these trading cards—objectively worthless by any normal standard—are going for $99 a piece, if you can believe it.
Trump released a new video Tuesday on Truth Social promoting the NFT collection, and it was shared across more popular social media platforms like X, where people couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing.
This is the crazy shit I have ever seen a presidential candidate do in the middle of a campaign. pic.twitter.com/yibrxcuXnW
— Christopher Bouzy (spoutible.com/cbouzy) (@cbouzy) August 27, 2024
Trump, who has shilled NFT collections before, opens the video by calling himself “your favorite president” and insisting that he’s releasing a new series of 50 NFT trading cards “by popular demand.” He’s calling it the “America First Collection” and the designs are hilariously bad.
“These cards show me dancing and even me holding some bitcoins,” Trump says to the camera. “Here’s the best part. I’m doing great things for my Trump digital card collectors. First, there’s the real physical Trump cards. Purchase 15 or more of my Trump digital trading cards and we’ll mail you a beautiful physical trading card. It’s really, I think, quite something.”
Sold at collecttrumpcards.com, the NFTs come in all kinds of assorted deals, where people can also pick up his collectible Trump-branded sneakers or other neo-fascist nonsense, like a VIP dinner with Trump himself if you buy 75 of his NFTs, bringing the grand total to about $7,500. But the weirdest tie-in might be the fact that some physical cards that get shipped with the NFT purchases come with a piece of the suit Trump wore at his debate in June with President Joe Biden.
“Each physical trading card has an authentic piece of my suit that I wore for the presidential debate,” Trump said. “And people are calling it the knockout suit. I don’t know about that, but that’s what they’re calling it. So we’ll cut up the knockout suit and you’re going to get a piece of it and we’ll be randomly autographing five of them, a true collector’s item.”
Much like Trump’s first NFT collection, the designs are comically horrible, like the one featured in a promotion for his dinner below. What’s going on with his head and neck? Has the artist ever seen Donald Trump before? You may also want to read the fine print there, which says the cards are “for illustrative purposes only” and “the actual Trading Card may vary from the images depicted.”
“So go to collecttrumpcards.com. It’s really easy to buy. You just need an email address and a credit card or crypto. You know, they call me the crypto president,” Trump says in the video. “I don’t know if that’s true or not, but a lot of people are saying that. So don’t miss out. Go to collecttrumpcards.com. Go right now and collect your piece of American history. Let’s have fun together and enjoy my Trump cards. We’re going to have a lot of fun. We’ll be talking about it for a long time. Thank you very much. Have a good time.”
Trump genuinely appears to be struggling to speak in the video. In fact, most of his recent appearances show signs of the 78-year-old struggling to get the words out. Sometimes Trump’s words are slurred, while other times he clearly just doesn’t know how to stop himself from verbally stumbling. The former president really does seem to be deteriorating physically and mentally, with many people speculating online that it may have something to do with the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trump sounds sedated pic.twitter.com/hbu3I8iZlB
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 26, 2024
Nobody can be certain, of course, but some wonder if Trump is suffering from PTSD and whether that’s manifesting in various ways that make it difficult for Trump to speak. For whatever it’s worth, Trump denied having PTSD during a recent interview with CBS News. He insists instead that God saved his life that day.
And if you think Trump is God really did save Trump’s life, you can now spend hundreds of dollars to show your appreciation. Importantly, much like the Trump Bible, your money isn’t going to God. In this case “the big guy” is just Trump himself.
