By Daniel Cassady
Senior Writer, ARTnews
Former President Donald Trump, riding high on the tails of an NFT drop earlier this month that saw 45,000 digital “trading cards” sell out in mere hours, told OAN last week that the collection wasn’t about the money. It was about the art.
And, of course, his image.
“Well, I knew nothing about [NFTs] and then a group came, and I loved the art. They showed me the art,” the former president said. “You know, it’s sort of comic book art when you think of it, but they showed me the art and I said, gee, I always wanted to have a 30-inch waist.”
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In the time-honored fashion of art lovers, Trump added “wow, that’s sorta cute, that might sell, that might sell.’ They thought it would sell in six months, it sold in six hours.”
Originally set at $99 a pop, the tough guy-cum-action figure themed NFTs flew off the blockchain shelves and sold out in about 12 hours. The collection is currently worth 7,629 ETH, according to the NFT platform OpenSea. With the current exchange rate that’s about $9.42 million, though the price has fluctuated.
Not every Trump supporter was pleased with the drop. Trump built up the release in typical bombast, teasing a “major announcement” that some thought would reveal his running mate for the 2024 presidential election.
Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor, scoffed at the announcement on his War Room podcast, saying those responsible “ought to be fired” for overshadowing Trump’s plans to “battle left-wing censorship” if he wins back the White House. Daniel Bostic, a former conservative congressional aide said the announcement was “a slap in the face to Trump’s base.”
Controversy has been swirling around the NFTs since they were released. According to New York’s Intelligencer, there have been claims that some of the images were swiped from copyrighted work from Amazon, DNW Outdoors, Men’s Wearhouse, and Shutterstock. In one image, the Adobe watermark seems to be lurking in the sky behind a wryly winking Trump.
Among the highlights of the Trump NFT collection available on OpenSea: a winking Trump, wearing boxing gloves and a USA cap, beneath a shower of Trump-branded gold bars (.200 ETH), and Trump, with an 8-bit head, giving a raised-first salute in front of an aggressively blurred cityscape (.230 ETH).
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