Imagine if at the height of his
scandal Richard Nixon cashed in by selling bookings to the Watergate Hotel? Well, that’s exactly what the current resident of the White House is doing, in what likely is the most blatant example
of crass Presidential campaign commercialization to date.
“Set the record straight! Get your set of Official Donald Trump fine point markers today,” reads the promotional
copy on the Trump Pence campaign website, offering a set of five markers for $15, during the height of “Sharpie-gate.”
Give the campaign props for “leaning
into” a controversy that most brands would otherwise seek to lean away from, but seeing as the President has double-, triple-, quadrupled-down on his assertion that National Weather Service data
supported his contention that Hurricane Dorian was going to high Alabama “hard,” why not rub his critics' noses directly into the fact that he personally doctored a hurricane trajectory
map with a Sharpie magic marker? And actually profit from it.
advertisement
advertisement
No word at presstime on how much the campaign raked in. Or for that matter, how much of a bump actual Sharpie marketer
-- Atlanta-based Newell Brands -- has benefited from the bump?