The failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump has ignited a surge of online merchandise showcasing the US presidential candidate moments after he was shot, adorned with slogans like "Bulletproof," "Legends Never Die," "Grazed but not Dazed," and "Shooting Makes Me Stronger." T-shirts featuring Trump raising his fist with blood on his face are selling for $9 to $40 and have become wildly popular. Within hours of the shooting, businesses and individual sellers rushed to produce and market items, often portraying the Republican candidate as resilient, joining a long list of Trump-related products.
"The sales surpassed my expectations. I didn't anticipate that Trump would have so many supporters," said Zhong Jiachi, 28, the owner of Paxinico, a clothing retailer on Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok, who sold about 40 T-shirts with the shot Trump image within 24 hours. Li Jinwei, 25, a seller on Alibaba's Taobao platform, told Hong Kong media that it took only about 30 seconds to produce a Trump T-shirt at her factory in China. "We listed the T-shirts on Taobao immediately after hearing about the shooting, even before printing them, and within three hours, we received over 2,000 orders from both China and the United States," she explained.
The image of Trump staring into the camera, a common motif in previous merchandise, mirrors his iconic pose from "The Apprentice," the reality TV show he hosted for years. In 2023, a ghostly image of Trump was quickly transformed into various items including T-shirts, shot glasses, mugs, posters, and bobblehead dolls by both supporters and opponents. On Saturday, supporters and campaigners rallied around the image of Trump taken just after a 20-year-old man shot at him from a rooftop, as they prepared for the US presidential election in November. The former president was at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a crucial state in the November 5 election, when gunfire erupted, striking his right ear and leaving him bloodied.
