We’re All Too Beat Down to Care That Trump Is Hawking $100,000 Watches and Crypto

Though, technically, we should care

Above: A still of merchandise available at gettrumpwatches.com.

If you’re like me, then you’re far too tired and defeated of a human being to get up in arms about this:

K. Trump watches. Roger that — can I go play XBox now? I mean, I know it’s fucked up that a presidential candidate has a merch store in which he sells bibles, sneakers, and other stuff, and I know that an ethical breach like that would sink any other campaign, but I also know that Trump’s fans will hold him to ethical standards the same day that Willie Nelson’s fans demand that he submit to rigorous drug testing. If you’re Jimmy Carter, you have to walk away from your peanut farm, if you’re Richard Nixon, you have to itemize a puppy on your FEC filing, but if you’re Trump, your campaign can be the loss leader for your trashy-rich QVC store, and we’ll all say “whatever” and freak out over a baby hippo.

I don’t expect you to care about Trump watches. I don’t care, nor will I ever. But let’s acknowledge that we should care. Let me quickly run through the reasons why we should care, and then we can get back to the MLB playoffs and making fun of Megalopolis.

Politicians aren’t supposed to personally benefit from running for and holding office. They do benefit, of course — we pay them a salary, plus they get notoriety that they wouldn’t get unless they went through the hassle of becoming a serial killer. Still, we try to make the phrase “public servant” not be downright hilarious. We keep tabs on campaign spending, and it’s risky for politicians to vote themselves a pay raise. Voters typically punish candidates whose careers are a thinly veiled attempt to enrich themselves because we know that a politician’s career is supposed to be a thinly veiled attempt to get some tail and punish the people who were mean to them in high school.

Private holdings create conflicts of interest. We forced Jimmy Carter’s peanut farm into a blind trust because we couldn’t have him making decisions in the shadow of his sprawling peanut empire. After all: When news of the Iranian Revolution breaks, you can’t have the president thinking: “How will this affect the pH balance in the soil for next year’s peanut crop?” Trump has numerous business interests, including a stock for idiots and — recently — a cryptocurrency. Crypto happens to be one of the few policy issues that Trump talks about in between riffs about Hannibal Lecter and immigrants eating cats — could that have something to do with his stake in Pretend Money For Suckers, Inc.? It might!

A politician’s side gigs also open the door to corruption. The Trump Victory Tourbillon Watch sells for $100,000 — how is buying that watch different from handing Trump $100,000 (or $99,980 after subtracting the value of the watch)? Did you know that the total amount of money Eric Adams is accused of taking from Turkey happens to be $100,000? And did you know that you can buy the Trump watch with Bitcoin, thus making the payment untraceable? It’s easy to imagine foreign actors sitting around wondering what’s the best way to bribe Trump, and then they see the ad for Trump Brand Luxury Watches For Men With Weird Penises and think: “Eureka!” I’m honestly surprised that Trump didn’t record the watch promo in Turkish, Russian, and Arabic to reach his target audience.

Trump is uniquely bribable because of his extensive legal troubles. He owes $546 million from civil suits, which he has told the court he can’t pay.¹ He also has unknown legal fees, and I don’t know if you know this about lawyers in New York, but they can be a tad expensive. People always assume that Trump is rich, but consider that most of what he owes from civil suits comes from the fact that he was lying about his wealth. He’s also done things that are hard to explain if he’s flush with cash, such as nickel and diming David Pecker and retaining the services of Rudy Giuliani.

So: You’ve got a guy with no ethical standards who might be desperate for cash hawking overpriced junk that can be bought with untraceable crypto. His presidential run seems to be critical to his business strategy, because he wouldn’t get this kind of attention if he wasn’t running for president. If you’re not convinced by that last point, then ask yourself: How many early-2000s reality TV stars have enough name recognition to sell overpriced, self-branded crap? If the lady from The Weakest Link sold $100 coins with her face on them, would anyone buy them? If Trump can capitalize on his presidential run enough to squeeze money from sad losers and foreign interests, then he wins even if he loses.

None of this will make a damn bit of difference in the election, of course. I’m confident that not a single vote will be swayed by Trump’s blindingly obvious conflicts of interest. I’m not sure why — it seems that because some criticisms of Trump are overblown, his fans have declared him to be immune from all criticism from now until the end of time. I don’t know why things are this way. And it doesn’t matter; I don’t know how electricity works, but when I flip the switch the light turns on and I don’t wonder how it happened — I can stay sane by having the same level of incuriosity about the special rules that apply only to Trump.

So, there: We did it. We talked about why it’s weird that Trump is selling stuff. You now have talking points for the world’s most useless political argument that you should never have with anybody, ever. We may all return to our Friends reruns and games of Valorant now that we’ve talked through an obvious ethical breach at the highest level of politics that will end up being nothing more than a footnote in this campaign.

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1. At a minimum, he has told the court that he can’t pay the largest judgement against him now, because he doesn’t have the liquidity.