On Thursday, a grand jury in Manhattan decided to indict Trump on charges related to a $130,000 (£105,000) hush money payment made to Ms. Daniels. In 2006, she says, the two had an affair. Mr. Trump has admitted to the payment but denied any s*xual encounter.
Soon after the allegations were made public, his campaign sent out a fundraising email.
“This Witch Hunt will BACKFIRE MASSIVELY,” he said in the email. “With your support, we will write the next great chapter of American history – and 2024 will forever go down as the year we saved our Republic.”
The message called for donations, saying that T-shirts reading “I stand with Trump” were “flying off shelves” and costs $47 (£38) each. After the indictment news broke, the Trump campaign claims to have raised over $4 million in less than 24 hours.
Yet the litigation has also been quite lucrative for Ms. Daniels. Orders for “#Teamstormy merch/authograph[s]” were “pouring in,” Ms. Daniels (real name: Stephanie Clifford) tweeted on Thursday after charges were announced.
She expressed her gratitude to her readers by writing, “Thank you to everyone for their support and love!” You can buy everything from $20 “#TEAMSTORMY” T-shirts to autographed posters of her in lingerie to a $30 dog chew toy designed to look like Donald Trump on her website. Her tweet was liked by over 94,000 people, and dozens of people thanked her.
There are more than a million people who follow the pornstar on Twitter, and more than 2,000 people who are part of her fan club on Facebook; many of them are staunch opponents of Mr. Trump. Ms. Daniels reportedly addressed claims that she was trying to profit from the romance on a live stream on OnlyFans on Wednesday night.
OnlyFans is a subscription-based website recognized for its explicit content. She argued that Mr. Trump was utilizing the lawsuit in the same way that “Everybody that has a business sells merch,” meaning to rake in cash.
Feel free to check out these other California-focused news outlets whenever it suits your schedule:
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“That’s actually – I can’t believe I’m about to say this – kind of brilliant,” she said. “Why is it OK for him and it’s not OK for me?” But it’s not just Ms. Daniels and Mr. Trump who are profiting from this.
On Friday, Ronald Solomon, a vendor selling Trump-themed caps and T-shirts outside the former president’s Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, told the Reuters news agency that sales had increased dramatically.
Calvin Coolidge, US president in the 1920s, famously said, “After all, the chief business of the American people is business.” which is aptly applicable to the money-making going on right now.
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