The hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday ripped into Donald Trump’s latest retail offering to MAGA fans: a line of watches that retail for as much as $100,000.
The former president promoted the “truly special” timepieces to followers on his Truth Social platform this week. Morning Joe featured a clip of the Republican nominee shilling the watches in a montage of his marketing efforts for other products, including his NFTs and coins.
“I will say, this is my favorite use of merchandising by a president since Gerald R. Ford sold his own personalized leather football helmets,” Joe Scarborough joked after the compilation ended. “And of course you had Michael Dukakis in ’88, with his push lawn mowers that he signed—but nothing like this. Nothing like this.”
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“It’s getting very expensive to be a supporter of Donald Trump,” co-host Willie Geist said. “Digital NFTs, you gotta buy the sneakers, you gotta buy the Bible, of course—the Trump Bible—and now you’ve gotta buy a watch.”
“Did you love, too, when he called himself a very beautiful man, and then pretended he was kidding?” Geist added.
Mika Brzezinski was more horrified by the price of some of the merchandise Trump is hawking.
“One of those watches is actually $100,000,” she said. “A hundred thousand for that,” she said, as the “Trump Victory Tourbillon” flashed on screen.
“A disclaimer on the website notes the proceeds do not directly benefit Trump or his campaign,” Brzezinski added. “Not directly,” she repeated with a mocking tone.
“First goes through PayPal, and then to…” Scarborough joked, before asking contributor Katty Kay if these kinds of merchandise sales happen in Britain. She said they does not but that a whole general election in the U.K. might see only $50 million spent, which is probably the equivalent of “one congressional race in New York or California.”
“That might win you comptroller of Vermont,” Scarborough said. Kay replied: “Dog walker of Burlington.”
Sam Stein then wondered aloud what product the former president would try to sell next. “I think he’s gonna get his own version of a Cybertruck,” Stein said, in a nod to the adoring support Trump is currently receiving from Tesla boss Elon Musk.
