By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
When Trump fans went to the official Trump Store Thursday morning, they were met with an unwelcome surprise. The website comes up blank, with a short message stating, “Oops, something went wrong. This shop is unavailable.”
What went wrong is that thousands of protestors marched from a Trump rally, where the President of the United States counseled his supporters to “fight” the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Rioters did exactly that, storming the barricades around Congress, and breaking into both the Senate and the House of Representatives in the most shocking example of insurrection the nation has seen since the American Civil War.
The outrage from Democrats, independents and Republicans alike has been swift and brutal, and the same is true of the corporate world. Shopify, the Canadian-owned leader in ecommerce, led the charge this week when it withdrew its services, resulting in the Trump Store being shut down, as well as the shop.donaldjtrump.com outlet.
“Based on recent events, we have determined that the actions by President Donald J. Trump violate our Acceptable Use Policy, which prohibits promotion or support of organizations, platforms or people that threaten or condone violence to further a cause,” a Shopify representative said on Thursday. “As a result, we have terminated stores affiliated with President Trump.” Other ecommerce companies like Amazon, Etsy and eBay are now under pressure to pull merchandise that can be seen as politically incendiary, or even as seditious. Already, eBay has delisted t-shirts emblazoned with the words, “MAGA Civil War January 6, 2021.” PayPal has also taken action, shutting down an account that was raising funds for Trump supporters who traveled to the nation’s capital.
There are other stores still powered by Shopify that sell Trump merchandise and that still remain open, but it’s unclear if Shopify will shutter their services for those sites as well. What is clear is that the President’s personal and political brand has suddenly become much more toxic due to his public incitement of the riots in Washington on Jan. 6. Prior to the riot, Trump still enjoyed fairly wide support from his MAGA crowd, and from Republican senators and representatives in Congress. That changed after the assault on the American Capitol this week, which included bombs placed near the Republican and Democratic national headquarters, the shooting of a Trump supporter during the riot, and the death of a Capitol Police officer who died from injuries received in the attack.
Trump was also banned indefinitely from four different social media networks, including Facebook and his beloved Twitter account, after months of claiming falsely that the presidential election was stolen from him by fraud. Across the United States, American companies are firing employees who took part in the attack. Even die-hard supporters of the President have jumped ship. One MAGA activist messaged reporter Michael Graham of The Palm Beach Post in Florida on Wednesday night, while watching the horrors unfold, and told him, “This is a f—–g disaster. #MAGA is dead.”
This publication reports on licensing and branding, not politics, so we’ll leave the political prognostications to others. From a branding point of view, however, it appears the fallout from Trump’s involvement in the Washington insurrection may have long-term, even permanent implications for the Trump organization, for his family, and for their collective business and political futures. Even on Fox, traditionally a strong supporter of the President, Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley said, “The Trump legacy has been left in tatters. I don’t think there’s ever been a lower moment for the presidency of the United States.”
That legacy will almost certainly impact Trump’s operations around the world, many of which have already suffered due to the President’s controversial political views, and that’s particularly true in countries where Trump’s popularity has typically been low throughout his presidency. In early 2019, well before the election, public confidence in Trump in foreign nations was lower than for any president in American history. According to Pew Research Center, only eight per cent of respondents in traditionally friendly neighbor Mexico felt Trump could be trusted to do the right thing, and people in Canada—arguably the US’s closest ally—showed only 28 per cent confidence in Trump. The numbers were similar throughout the Western World, with only two countries in Europe showing more than 30 per cent support for Trump, and the rest ranging mainly from 13 per cent to the low 20s.
Even more concerning for the Trump brand is that people who don’t like Trump, REALLY don’t like Trump, and that has hurt Trump properties in locations around the world. In Vancouver, Canada, when the Trump Hotel opened in 2017, then-Mayor Gregor Robertson asked for the Trump name to be removed, saying it had “no more place on Vancouver’s skyline than his ignorant ideas have in the modern world.” The hotel didn’t last long, closing permanently in August 2020.
In Scotland, home to what Trump described as his “iconic” golf properties in Aberdeenshire and Turnberry, business analysts said the President’s unpopularity in the country was preventing two of the country’s best courses from turning a profit. The Scottish newspaper The National said the Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire had run up losses of more than 9.4 million pounds since 2014, with Turnberry doing even worse with losses of more than 42 million pounds, and that was before the pandemic hit. “The Trump brand isn’t so popular in Scotland,” said Dr. Elaine Ritch of Glasgow Caledonian University, a specialist in international marketing. “I don’t think Trump brings anything to the properties. I don’t think his name attached to them does them any favors.”
The issues with the Trump brand were present before the November election, the subsequent false allegations of election fraud, and long before the scenes in Washington on Jan. 6. Since then, foreign leaders have spoken out, and most are slamming Trump for what they see as his incitement of a seditious mob who tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
“Deeply worrying developments in Washington, D.C.,” said Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. “This is an assault on democracy. President Trump and several members of Congress bear substantial responsibility for developments.” German chancellor Angela Merkel also blamed Trump, saying, “I regret very much that President Trump has still not admitted defeat, but has kept raising doubts about the elections.”
Even leaders in the UK—usually friendly to the Trump administration—directly blamed the President. “I just want to say that all my life, America has stood for some very important things: An idea of freedom and an idea of democracy,” said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “Insofar as he encouraged people to storm the Capitol, and insofar as the President consistently has cast doubt on the outcome of a free and fair election, I believe that that was completely wrong. I think what President Trump has been saying about that has been completely wrong, and I unreservedly condemn encouraging people to behave in the disgraceful way they did in the Capitol.”
The President’s more immediate worries are legal: the question of whether he will be impeached, or even investigated under America’s sedition and treason laws, is still open. But, even if the outgoing President stays out of prison, the Trump Organization’s long-term issue is that the founder and namesake of their company is now irretrievably linked to a criminal act of sedition by violent fanatics. Good luck to the branding company that gets that contract.