Analysis | Trump used to sell the perception of opulence. Now he just sells Trump. – The Washington Post

For decades, Donald Trump had a straightforward sales pitch: He was the guy who knew how to be rich.

In book form, this meant telling people how they, too, could become rich — though it’s unclear how sales of “The Art of the Deal” correlate to actual wealth accumulation. In product form, Trump’s pitch centered on the manifestation of that wealth: black marble, gilded fixtures and, at the periphery, other accoutrements of income, like high-end steak or wine.

All of it was gilded, in a sense, given that Trump’s offerings were generally mid-tier (or lower) offerings masked with a veneer of class and luxury. But he was clear in what he offered and in who his audience was.

Now that audience has changed — and his product line has changed to match.

Trump’s political career is intertwined with his corporate one. He parlayed his TV show “The Apprentice” into the sort of name recognition that ensured coverage for his political ambitions. His 2015 announcement that he would seek the Republican presidential nomination mostly yielded shrugs, until his comments about immigrants triggered headline-grabbing backlash — not from other Republicans but from his corporate partners.

In March 2016, well after he was on his way to the nomination and the presidency, Trump held an event at one of his properties in Florida specifically to tout his Trump-branded line of products. The trigger was a scathing speech from 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney in which he noted that many of Trump’s brands had failed. So Trump gathered together a number of Trump-branded (and putatively Trump-branded) items to demonstrate how his empire was thriving.

“I have very successful companies,” Trump insisted as he spoke. He noted that he had filed documents outlining his corporate empire and that “many of the press have gone down and seen, and they were all very, very impressed. I built a great, great company.”

For example, he said, there were all of the jobs he’d created in New York City, including the complex of buildings along the Hudson River — what he dubbed “one of the most successful projects ever built in real estate.”

At the time, those buildings represented one of Trump’s most inescapable thumbprints on Manhattan, a line of apartment buildings emblazoned with his last name along a busy stretch of road. But then he became president and New Yorkers, including some living in those buildings, weren’t happy about it. Throughout his presidency, residents voted to have the word “Trump” removed from the buildings’ facades until none were left.

This happened in lots of places, including Central Park. In early 2018, The Washington Post went looking for the remnants of Trump’s brand partnerships, finding that most had collapsed. I remember walking into a showroom in Manhattan looking for whatever might be left of a Trump-branded furniture line. I found a chair.

Even Trump’s infamous line of glossy ties — an offshoot of his TV show — had fallen by the wayside. Trump was still making money off the Trump Organization, including millions from foreign actors paying into Trump’s real estate and hotel businesses. But the Trump name as a brand? In many places, it was simply a death knell.

Take the Trump Organization’s big bet on a hotel/condominium complex in Manhattan — a bet that was fraught in multiple ways. After the building opened, Trump’s presidency drove potential customers away. Then it was renamed to the Dominick and business boomed.

Trump still had customers interested in the Trump name, of course. It just wasn’t the base that he’d spent so long cultivating. His shift to politics meant that the aspiration to which he was appealing also shifted: from opulence to dominance. The Trump name for decades was meant to be a stand-in for luxury. Now it just means Trump.

Over the weekend, the Republican presidential front-runner went to Philadelphia to promote a new Trump-branded product: expensive sneakers. The shoes are a precise distillation of the Trump brand: gold almost all over, including the block-T on the side. The only deviation from the gold is an American-flag theme on the shoe’s high top. The shoes — named “NEVER SURRENDER HIGH-TOP SNEAKER,” about Trump’s response to being criminally indicted — retail for $399.

That announcement was paired with a new fragrance line: perfume and cologne called “Victory47,” a reference to Trump’s hope to be America’s 47th president after previously serving as its 45th. (A cheaper line of sneakers in red and white have “45” on one side and “T” on the other.) The bottle of cologne is topped with a miniature version of Trump’s head.

This isn’t the first Trump-branded cologne. He used to sell fragrances in stocky, understated bottles called “Empire” and “Success.” Now it’s this — a tall gold bottle with his head on top.

Trump’s post-presidency side hustles also include a very belated foray into the world of NFTs, pieces of digital art that are ostensibly constrained in supply. The NFT bubble had burst and left sticky residue over the digital economy well before Trump jumped in, but jump in he did. An initial offering allowed fans to spend $99 on Photoshopped images of Trump doing various red-state activities like driving a racecar or hunting. He later expanded this product line to offer purchasers pieces of the suit he wore in his Fulton County, Ga., mug shot photo.

Trump’s business empire has evolved in other ways, too. There’s the (unquestionably) lucrative partnership between the Trump Organization and Saudi-backed LIV Golf. There was the creation of the struggling social media site Truth Social, which served less as an extension of Trump’s brand than as an ability to interact with his base.

But it, too, reflected the changed market to which the Trump brand appeals: people who just want to hear from Trump, regardless of whether he’s talking about real estate or (as is more common) how non-Trump politicians are destroying the country.

A decade ago, what Trump offered American consumers was an ostensible road map to fabulous wealth. His decision to give that up in favor of political power meant that the Trump Organization’s pitch had to change, too. No longer was he trying to present the image of a successful Manhattan business magnate but, instead, of a red-state magnate bent on reversing how America is changing.

His audience changed and so did his products. A Trump consumer is no longer someone looking to eat an elegant steak in an upscale New York hotel while smelling faintly of “Success.” Instead, it’s the sort of person who thinks buying gold shoes sends a signal of defiance to America’s institutions of power.