Trump stands to make $1.5 million (minus expenses) from selling these. That’s pocket change to Trump. Not worth getting involved with to clear maybe $1 million after the dust settles. He seems to always charge $300 each when he peddles his crap, which makes me think that’s simply the sweet spot to maximize how much Trump can grift out of the rubes without going into sticker shock.
If this were money laundering, there wouldn’t be a limit and the sneakers would be a lot more expensive. They wouldn’t want rubes buying them because that means they’d have to actually produce the sneakers, increasing their expenses. They would simply be “available” at stupidly expensive prices so Trump’s associates can funnel thousands or millions of dollars at a time to “buy” sneakers that will never arrive. You know. For re-sale. Or as a collector’s item. Or to give away to friends/supporters. Or whatever excuse they can come up with when they’re asked where the sneakers they supposedly bought ended up.
If this were money laundering, it’s the dumbest money laundering scheme in the history of ever. Maximum exposure and risk for minimum reward. With that said, that could also be used as the reason to believe Trump would be dumb enough to do this. But he’s got $45 million a month coming from Musk alone; he’s not going to bother getting into elaborate money laundering schemes for 2% of that. Selling the sneakers to rubes is simply grabbing the low hanging fruit.
I thought its primarly money-laundering
Trump stands to make $1.5 million (minus expenses) from selling these. That’s pocket change to Trump. Not worth getting involved with to clear maybe $1 million after the dust settles. He seems to always charge $300 each when he peddles his crap, which makes me think that’s simply the sweet spot to maximize how much Trump can grift out of the rubes without going into sticker shock.
If this were money laundering, there wouldn’t be a limit and the sneakers would be a lot more expensive. They wouldn’t want rubes buying them because that means they’d have to actually produce the sneakers, increasing their expenses. They would simply be “available” at stupidly expensive prices so Trump’s associates can funnel thousands or millions of dollars at a time to “buy” sneakers that will never arrive. You know. For re-sale. Or as a collector’s item. Or to give away to friends/supporters. Or whatever excuse they can come up with when they’re asked where the sneakers they supposedly bought ended up.
If this were money laundering, it’s the dumbest money laundering scheme in the history of ever. Maximum exposure and risk for minimum reward. With that said, that could also be used as the reason to believe Trump would be dumb enough to do this. But he’s got $45 million a month coming from Musk alone; he’s not going to bother getting into elaborate money laundering schemes for 2% of that. Selling the sneakers to rubes is simply grabbing the low hanging fruit.