Bet you couldn’t get enough of this mug, huh? The only thing is that this Photoshop job appears to have been randomly edited using images taken directly from the internet.
For the past 24 hours, fans of former President Donald Trump have sat huddled in their chairs, waiting with bated breath for a purported announcement that the one-time tweeter-in-chief promised would blow them away. the public a video to his Truth Social page which shows a picture of him in some kind of superhero outfit, sporting pecs he certainly doesn’t have, while laser beams shoot out of his eyes. What could this mean? What apocalypse was coming?
On Thursday the big surprise was finally revealed and it was nothing more than another horrible NFT project which, in Trump’s words, featured “THE incredible ART of my life and career!” These “digital business cardsthey are in fact just another NFT project to get cash, but the low-quality images and the company behind the project are a more complicated puzzle.
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Each NFT retails for a total of $99, with some limited to single copies, while other NFTs are available in two, five, seven, or 10 copies. There are a total of 45,000 cards in the initial release, but even more so, one big Trump fan will be “guaranteed” a ticket to a future black-tie dinner with him, apparently at his Mar a Lago residence in South Florida. The auction even promised to pay for transportation. So yeah, spend $4,455 and you too can sit down with the former president in person. Although we can guarantee you that it won’t look as skinny as it does on these trading cards.
The images were so lazy that, according to reverse image searches, they were edited photos pulled from the internet. It’s unclear if they were hand-edited or perhaps created with AI image generation, though the one image of Trump in hunting gear bears a very clear resemblance to waders made by Banded, a hunting clothing company.
Trump’s cowboy outfit seems to match a leather duster Made by Scully Sportswear, a California based western costume and apparel store.
Gizmodo reached out to both companies to see if they had an agreement with the NFT project to apparently use their products, but we didn’t immediately hear back.
Everything is strange in many different ways. In a video showing Trump promoting the project, Trump claims it is “better than [Abraham] lincoln better than [George] Washington.” Then he says, “Each card comes with an automatic chance to win amazing prizes like dinner with me. I don’t know if it’s an amazing prize, but it’s what we got.”
And while your first guess would be that all of this money would go to support Trump’s re-election campaign, you’d be wrong, at least according to the company page. NFT INT LLC, the company listed as the host of the NFT auction, wrote:
“These digital business cards are not political and have nothing to do with any political campaign. NFT INT LLC is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC or any of their respective directors or affiliates. The name, likeness, and likeness of Donald J. Trump is used by NFT INT LLC under a paid license from CIC Digital LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked in accordance with its terms.”
Gizmodo reached out to NFT INT to better understand how this all came together, but we didn’t immediately hear back.
Things get even stranger when you look at the company running the auction. The company, NFT INT LLC, lists its address in a Kitsch Mall in Utah containing a few shops and restaurants, a dry cleaner, as well as a UPS store. As Gizmodo previously reported, companies affiliated with attempts to buy Trump’s favorite social media platform, Truth Social, have had similar arrangements being based on a UPS Store mailbox.
It is even less clear who is operating behind the scenes. Gizmodo found two companies called NFT INT registered in California and Delaware, which of course are also not located in Utah. We contacted the person listed as the CEO of NFT INT LLC, registered in California, who told us that his company was not affiliated with this project.
The Salt Lake Tribune report at NFTs confirmed the strangeness surrounding the UPS store mailbox. The Tribune also noted that while the Twitter account for the NFT project lists Florida as its business residence, there are 20 businesses in Florida that list the Utah UPS mailbox as their residence.
So if you really like the idea of a Trump NFT, for whatever reason, keep in mind that NFTs are “non-refundable” and “non-returnable”. Of course you can do what we did and right click and “save as” but that would defeat the purpose of digital scarcity, wouldn’t it?
Update 12/15/2022 at 11:00 pm ET: This post has been updated to include information about California-based NFT INT LLC and to add additional information from the Salt Lake Tribune.
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