Donald Trump has created a new category of politician, the presidential huckster in chief, treating major events — from an assassination attempt to criminal indictments — as opportunities to market everything from $59.99 “God Bless the USA” Bibles to swatches of the suit he wore when he was arrested in Georgia in 2023 (for a little over $4600) to “truly special” diamond-encrusted Trump watches that can go for as much as $100,000.

CIC Ventures LLC (CIC stands for commander in chief, in case you were wondering) sells Trump-endorsed goods and also licenses the use of his name in connection with the merchandise he pushes. In his August 2024 financial disclosure statement, Trump lists himself as the company’s “manager, president, secretary and treasurer.”

CIC Ventures, in turn, controls a website, GetTrumpSneakers.com, where Trump fans can preorder, for $499, “The Never Surrender Gold Low-Sneakers — Fight Fight Fight Edition,” or, for $299, the “Fight Fight Fight High Tops — Silver,” emblazoned with a picture of a bloodied Trump, fist in the air, after the failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. on July 13.

For those with extra cash to spare, there is the $200 bottle of “Fight Fight Fight Cologne for Men, the bold new fragrance from Trump Fragrances. For Patriots who never back down, like President Trump. This scent is your rallying cry in a bottle. Featuring Trump’s iconic image and raised fist, this limited-edition cologne embodies strength, power and victory.”

In a video posted Sept. 21 on Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, the former president told viewers:

Good morning everyone — I have something incredible to share today, as we are introducing the launch of our Official Trump Coins! The ONLY OFFICIAL coin designed by me — and proudly minted here in the U.S.A. The President Donald J. Trump First Edition Silver Medallion will be available starting Wednesday, 9/25/24, EXCLUSIVELY at realtrumpcoins.com/. Sign up today! @realtrumpcoins.

In a sales pitch that closely resembles a late-night TV ad, Trump described the $100 coins as

A true symbol of American greatness. These coins are designed by me and minted right here in the U.S.A. This beautiful limited edition coin commemorates our movement, our fight for freedom, prosperity and for America first. We always put America first. Its more than just a collector’s item, it’s a testament to the resilience and strength of the American people, to the American patriots we love so much. This coin is composed of 99.9 pure silver, with a beautiful proof finish. It’s really very special. Each coin comes with a certificate of authenticity with my signature to make sure you have purchased a real Trump coin.

Five days later, Trump was back on Truth Social with another opportunity to buy a Trump-endorsed product:

The Official Trump Watch Collection — priced for $499 to $100,000 — is here, and these Watches are truly special — You’re going to love them. Would make a great Christmas Gift. Don’t wait, they will go fast. GET YOUR TRUMP WATCH RIGHT NOW! Go to gettrumpwatches.com/.

In a Truth Social post in March promoting the sale of Trump-endorsed Bibles, the former president declared

Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible.

“All Americans,” Trump added in an accompanying video, “need a Bible in their home, and I have many.”

Trump loyalists who bought stock when Truth Social went public -— trading as the Trump Media & Technology Group Corp — have taken a severe beating. TMTG stock initially rose to a high of $79.38 on March 26, but since then it has nose-dived; on Tuesday, it sat at $21.80.

How is it that Trump supporters not only tolerate getting ripped off but keep coming back for more?

Steven Brint, a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of California-Riverside, emailed his answer to that question:

Trump’s actions look like the worst sort of con to liberals, because, as they see it, he is selling merchandise of little intrinsic value for exorbitantly high prices to ill-informed consumers. His actions utterly fail the consumer protection test.

These actions look very different to his supporters. A large part of the mythology surrounding Trump is that he is a successful businessman. Some large segment of his supporters may think that it is natural for a ‘successful businessman’ to capitalize on commercial opportunities and they may admire him for doing so. Trump has also cultivated an image of being “the savior” of the Republic.

This image is resonant among his more religiously inclined supporters. Just as devout Catholics are eager to touch the hem of Jesus’s garment, these believers may feel the force of a supernatural power by owning a piece of Trump’s clothing or likeness. For them, the cost may be a small price to pay for proximity to what they consider to be “the divine.”

Geoffrey Layman, a political scientist at Notre Dame, expanded on Brint’s argument in an email, suggesting that there is a quasi-sacred element to the loyalty of Trump voters:

It speaks to the degree to which Trump has become almost a religious figure to his most ardent supporters. It’s not dissimilar from people who give their very limited savings to the “ministries” of corrupt televangelists who use the money for their own personal profit. Trump’s most devoted followers really do view him as a savior for them and the country against the forces of woke, secular liberal globalism.

They feel like their basic identity as hardworking (in many cases, Christian) Americans is under attack from the liberal media and woke entertainment industry, the coastal cultural and academic elite, immigration from the global South, and economic automation and globalism. Trump has told them that he alone stands between them and those forces, and they believe him. I think they buy what he’s selling because they believe the money will be used to save them and to save America.

Justin Gest, a professor of policy and government at George Mason University, observed: “Donald Trump is not a candidate; he is a cause.”

Trump, Gest wrote by email, “has successfully cast himself as not a man, but a movement — the lone advocate standing between his supporters and a dangerous, uncertain future.”

The monetary payoff grows out of Trump’s success in “remaking the Republican Party in his name. It converts Trump into an institution that can survive the stench of corruption and malfeasance.”

Perhaps, Gest suggested,

We should interpret all of it as the blurry evolution of a campaign finance system that effectively legalizes bribery in the form of massive donations that can be used for a variety of purposes in the name of a political race. Or perhaps we should interpret it as the extortion it amounts to. Trump — the cause — wields fear to mobilize supporters to spend their paychecks and overlook the obvious corruption of American public affairs.

Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, stressed Trump’s motivations in his emailed response to my queries:

Trump takes existing weaknesses in the corruption regulations and exploits them more boldly and explicitly than his immediate predecessors. Former presidents have used their fame to give well paid speeches or to serve for fees on corporate boards after leaving office. Trump likes to make money while in office.

Is this bad? Cain asked and answered his own question:

That brings me to the question of who buys these items and why. One category are loyal followers who buy single items to express their devotion to him and to signal their affiliation to the MAGA cause. That is their choice, and if it gives them satisfaction, there is not a case for substantial democratic harm. But there may be other buyers who buy more quantities or more expensive versions of his products to curry favor with him. This falls more under the appearance of a corruption framework where the implicit exchange might be corroding the perceived legitimacy of government: e.g., the owner of a company who buys hundreds of gold sneakers for his employees or holds his association conferences at Trump’s hotels.

Cain noted that “concerns about Trump’s efforts at grifting during his first term faded quickly” after the focus of public attention shifted to “his role in the Jan. 6 uprising.” The last time Congress enacted reforms designed to limit the ability of public and private figures to profit from government connections was in 2007, in the aftermath of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandals, Cain pointed out, but the “problems were not resolved satisfactorily. Trump has a good eye for such opportunities.”

In many respects, Trump fits into a classic American tradition.

Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, pointed out in an email that

The charismatic leader who exploits his flock is a staple of both newspapers and American literature. Mark Twain wouldn’t be shocked by Trump. More broadly, there have always been politicians who monetized their political power or popularity. Even politicians whom readers of your column generally approve of have become rich because of their political power and influence. What makes Trump different is that it’s fully transparent, all on the surface. He’s completely transactional, and he thinks everyone else is, too. It’s why he seems not to understand military service — what’s in it for them? If hypocrisy has always been the homage that vice pays to virtue, Trump asks virtue, what’s in it for him?

Trump, Lee said,

is a recognizable creature out of American life. The confidence man isn’t a new figure in U.S. history. The term itself comes out of the N.Y.C. of the 1840s. Herman Melville famously wrote about the type, the charismatic huckster. Take a look at the newspaper today, with the story about the evangelical church in Dallas-Fort Worth wracked by scandals. None of those stories would shock Twain or Melville.

Conversely, Lee suggested,

One might also ask if Trump is just a little ahead of his time. Think about sports gambling — the sports leagues used to talk about the integrity of the game, keeping the recently departed Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame, but now there’s a sports book in the ballpark, and ESPN is pushing its own gambling app in nonstop ads. The same is true of sports talk radio — it’s all ads for gambling, with the hosts often doing ad reads. College sports — football and basketball, anyway — are awash in money. Any fig leaf that the athletes were amateurs — a foundational myth of the NCAA — is removed. It disgusted even Nick Saban, who, as head coach at Alabama, had to know how to win within the old rules. Baseball may be a metaphor for America — the nation once turned its lonely eyes to Joe DiMaggio, but today it’s urged to learn how to make prop bets.

David Sears, a political psychologist at U.C.L.A., contended in an email that Trump is emblematic of an American stereotype that helps answer the question, “How can people be so gullible?”

I can think of a couple of fictitious renderings that I take as paradigmatic for this phenomenon in American culture, though neither is from politics. It is part of our cultural heritage. One is Sinclair Lewis’s book, “Elmer Gantry” about a very similar character who is a preacher. Another is the musical, “The Music Man.” Sells a small town a bill of goods about musical instruments. Then there is the novel by Robert Penn Warren loosely based on Huey Long, “All the King’s Men.” It’s a classic American story. We’re just not used to seeing it in a serious presidential candidate.

Trump the carnival barker and Trump the MAGA pol reinforce each other.

Bart Bonikowski, a professor of sociology and political science at N.Y.U., described this phenomenon in an email:

Trump has always been primarily a brand. Most properties and products that bear his name are not owned by him; they pay him licensing fees. He has gone to great lengths to cultivate an image of a self-made millionaire and this narrative has become self-fulfilling: people believe it, want to bask in Trump’s glow, and are willing to pay money to do so, which then enriches Trump and further strengthens the value of his brand.

Since 2015, this dynamic has extended from the private sector to the political world — or more accurately, Trump has fused the two domains. MAGA and Trump have become powerful political brands that signify political dominance — over ethnic, racial, and religious minorities, immigrants and liberal elites. Because Trumpism is ultimately a cult of personality, to invest in the symbolic meaning of MAGA is to invest in Trump himself — and therefore to have no qualms about enriching the man by consuming his brands. It’s all part of the deal. He breaks the system on your behalf and you willingly enable his grift, all while signaling to others that you’re on Team Trump.

Tali Mendelberg, a political scientist at Princeton, made a similar argument by email, using the word “image” instead of “brand”:

A substantial element of Trump support has to do with his image as a dominant leader fighting for the rightful status of ‘true’ Americans. Supporters are more like fans looking to express their loyalty than they are cost-benefit market actors evaluating policy outcomes. Fans want symbols that exhibit their connection to the celebrity. These products fulfill that symbolic and expressive need.

Trump is perhaps unique in peddling his products not only as a candidate but while in office.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, noted in an email that

We’ve had a lot of politicians try to monetize their fame after leaving office — including, most recently, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — but never had such aggressive efforts to personally collect money from supporters while running for or holding office. As always with Trump, the challenge is that norm violations like these are not severely sanctioned by voters. Even outright corruption is not always enough for voters to support the other side.

Nyhan cited a number of studies demonstrating the low salience of corruption in the minds of voters, including “The Electoral Consequences of Corruption,” “Choosing the Crook: a Conjoint Experiment on Voting for Corrupt Politicians” and “When Do Voters Sanction Corrupt Politicians?”

Trump’s history of merchandising himself may be broadly revealing in unexpected ways, in particular because it provides insight into why he finds acknowledging defeat unbearable.

Rogers Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, suggested in an email that Trump’s identity is so invested in his ability to market himself — through branded products, building and corporate ventures — that failure creates a certain aura of pathos around him that seems to cause him excruciating pain and anguish:

There has never been a political figure like Donald Trump in American history, but that is because he is fundamentally a different, but very common, American type: He is not really a politician, he is a salesman with a deep longing and need to be an acclaimed celebrity. He got into politics not out of any deep political convictions or even political ambitions, but as a way of expanding his celebrity and also showing up the many who saw him for what he is, a phony huckster.

It is an accident of history that he did so at a time when millions of Americans had deep and, in some regards, well-founded grievances against the leaders and policies of both major parties. Many of those millions were already enamored of the celebrity image created for Trump by his own salesmanship and by the makers of “The Apprentice.” As a skilled salesman, Trump sensed and spoke powerfully to those widespread grievances, vastly increasing the cult of personality he had already built. Most members of that cult have no problem with him pushing his merchandise. The Trump cult is now their community, they love to display their brand, and they see his marketing as just further proof that he is the thrillingly great salesman they adore.

That is why he can’t accept defeat. Like Willy Loman, he’s out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. When they stop smiling back, that’s an earthquake.