President-elect Donald Trump is using a photo of his “very nice” weekend chat with First Lady Jill Biden to hawk a line of perfumes and colognes so enticing that even “your enemies can’t resist” them. That catchphrase—emblazoned over a photo of Trump and Biden speaking during the reopening ceremony for Notre-Dame cathedral—appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account Sunday, along with a note that the $200 fragrances make “great” Christmas presents. “I’ve named them ‘Fight, Fight, Fight,’ because they represent winning,” Trump said, in a promotional video for the scents.
This is hardly the first—or tackiest—time that Trump has used his office to peddle branded merch, which has made him untold millions of dollars. His official store also sells Trump-branded candles, coffees, pickleball paddles, champagne flutes and golf balls; according to ABC News, the president-elect has made more than $5 million just from sales of books and Trump-branded Bibles. “It’s open season on the profiteering,” one former White House ethics lawyer told NBC News. Civic watchdogs don’t even know who benefits from these deals, or how they might influence Trump, because both the agreements and the companies they involve are typically private.
In addition to the book licensing deal, which Trump inked through a company called CIC Ventures, the president-elect has also scored more than $7 million in NFT sales through a separate licensing vehicle called CIC Digital. It’s less clear how much money he’s made from the sales of additional merchandise, including watches, sneakers and guitars. In late November, the guitar-maker Gibson sent Trump Guitars a cease-and-desist order, claiming that the president-elect’s new line of “Make America Great Again” guitars ripped off Gibson’s designs. The manufacturer has since pulled some of those instruments, and disclaimers about its non-relationship with Gibson now appear on every page of the Trump Guitars website.
But that’s arguably the least of Trump’s business conflicts as he heads back into the Oval Office. In addition to the real estate holdings and licensing deals he brought to his first term, the president-elect now has an interest in a cryptocurrency venture called World Liberty Financial and the Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social. In an interview Sunday with Meet the Press, Trump wouldn’t commit to divesting from TMTG, and a spokesperson likewise declined to specify how the president would handle his ever-multiplying conflicts of interest. “President Trump removed himself from his multi-billion-dollar real estate empire to run for office,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s incoming press secretary, said—an apparent reference to the fact that Trump has put many of his assets in a revocable trust that allows him to profit from his businesses while avoiding their day-to-day operations.
Ethics experts and watchdog groups have long argued that the structure of that trust, however, does not insulate Trump—who is reportedly worth $5.5 billion—from the entanglements of his private fortune.
