At Trump’s properties, a showcase for a brand and a president-elect
They stood in line at Trump Tower, sometimes up to half an hour, handing over their cash for mementos of the president-elect: mini, gold-wrapped chocolate bricks stamped “Trump.” Trump monogrammed sweaters, towels and glassware. Trump cologne.
“I bought it for my two sons,” said Shanon Loggins, 47, of Lufkin, Texas, showing off a golden shopping bag embossed with the Trump crest that carried two bottles of “Success by Trump,” a fragrance for men. “They need to be successful,” she explained.
Business is good for Donald Trump. People are flocking to his Midtown Manhattan skyscraper, dining in his restaurants and buying his wares. Reporters are fastidiously chronicling the comings and goings of his transition team, his self-branded properties providing the backdrop for television live shots.
Trump has taken the staid task of preparing to assume the presidency and turned it into an exercise in conspicuous self-promotion and carefully choreographed branding.
But as the president-elect makes use of his vast real estate holdings, he is also raising questions about whether he is exploiting the high profile and stature of the office to conduct what could be seen as a promotional tour for the Trump Organization.
The venues he has picked to conduct his official transition planning attest to his success as a real estate developer: Trump Tower, the Manhattan skyscraper where he lives and works amid Trump-themed eateries and boutiques; Mar-a-Lago, the upscale, private Palm Beach, Florida, club where he has chosen to hold meetings over Thanksgiving; and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Trump especially liked the Bedminster setting, he told his aides, because the images of him receiving potential Cabinet appointees at the front door of the clubhouse resembled 10 Downing St. in London.
In planning future transition meetings, Trump and his team are considering other properties of his that might fit his desire for rich, regal symbolism.
Merchandise in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, where the president-elect’s supporters have flocked to buy monogrammed sweaters, towels, chocolates and the like.
“It stinks,” said Norman Eisen, who was the chief White House ethics lawyer for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2011. Because there is no specific law prohibiting public officeholders from financially beneficial self-promotion, what Trump is doing is probably not illegal, Eisen added.
“But that doesn’t make it right,” he said. “It’s part and parcel of the unsavory marketing of his brands that he also did during the campaign.”
Unsavory or not, it is all part of the stagecraft and spectacle that Trump has directed from his 26th-floor office in Trump Tower — all of which is being ravenously consumed by the news media and his loyal followers.
Most days since Trump became the president-elect, the lobby of Trump Tower has been a public staging area for aspects of the transition that Trump most wants people to see.
Potential Cabinet appointees march across its buffed marble floors, past the cameras that stream the scene live to C-SPAN, and into the gold mirrored elevators. This week there were people like Gov. Mary Fallin of Oklahoma and Rick Perry, the former Texas governor who disparaged Trump as “a cancer on conservatism” when they were battling for the Republican nomination.
Trump and his staff have even devised a proper greeting protocol for arriving guests. As Perry made his way through the lobby Monday, a young woman looped her arm around his and escorted him past the cameras. The same woman was also on hand over the weekend to accompany visiting guests when Trump relocated the meetings to Bedminster.
The golf club was even more of a display of munificence, with Trump turning to the cameras to embrace Mitt Romney, who just months ago had condemned Trump as a “phony” and a “fraud.” He is now a leading candidate for secretary of state. There were more ethnically diverse potential cabinet candidates there, as well, like T.W. Shannon, the first African-American speaker of the Oklahoma House, and Michelle Rhee, a former schools chancellor in Washington, who is Asian-American.
When Trump was done interviewing them, he would see them off outside and, once again, banter with the news media.
The lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, where the president-elect’s supporters have flocked to buy monogrammed sweaters, towels, chocolates and the like.
“Tremendous talent — we’re seeing tremendous talent,” Trump said Saturday. “People that, as I say, we will ‘make America great again.’ These are really great people. These are really, really talented people.”
As the cameras rolled this weekend at Bedminster, temperatures dropped sharply, sending journalists into the gift shop, where the only cold-weather attire they could find was a winter hat with Trump embroidered on it.
The market for anything stamped Trump has been bustling. At the gift kiosk on the lower level of Trump Tower — between the Trump Ice Cream Parlor and the Trump Grill, with its $25 prix fixe lunch — the line Monday morning was about two dozen people deep. Cashiers were doing their civic diligence, asking anyone purchasing Trump campaign gear like the “Make America Great Again” hats ($25) whether they were American citizens. (Law prohibits foreigners from giving money to campaigns.)
Marilyn Bryan, 70, of Terre Haute, Indiana, was sitting at a table outside the kiosk with her daughter Trisha. In May, Bryan was at a Trump rally in her hometown when someone passed out next to her, knocked her down and broke her femur.
That might have been enough Trump for anyone else. But she decided that as long as she was visiting New York this week, she might as well stop by the tower to take in the scene. “What’d we spend? $200?” she asked her daughter. Inside her shopping bag were a hat, the golden Trump chocolate bars and some other Trump knickknacks she planned to give to her relatives. The chocolate, they were somewhat disappointed to learn, was actually made in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Standing nearby were Paul and Lea Foster of Hidden Hills, California. After purchasing two hats and two T-shirts, Lea Foster, 62, marveled at Trump’s ability to cash in on his name. “He’s sure figured out how to make money,” she said.
Her husband nodded. “He’s a businessman, a promoter,” said Paul Foster, 81. “Let’s hope he knows how to run the country.”
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Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting.
