Just hours after the assassination attempt, T-shirts and other merchandise featuring a photo of former President Donald Trump moments after surviving the assassination attempt began appearing on Chinese e-commerce sites, multiple media outlets reported.
The Associated Press, whose photographer Evan Vucci reportedly took one of the most widely shared photos of Trump raising his bloody fist after the shooting, found online shops late Saturday selling cheap T-shirts with that and other photos on a popular Chinese website. Many of these shops are on Chinese-language websites and targeted to Chinese customers, indicating that the incident has become a popular topic in China, despite the Communist Party’s widespread censorship of international news.
Trump was at a presidential rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday when a gunshot rang out, hitting Trump in the right ear and wounding several others. Rally attendee Corey Comperatore died while trying to shield his wife and daughter from the gunfire. Law enforcement identified a 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks as the shooter and removed him from the scene.
Trump himself said in a statement after the incident that he was nearly killed when a bullet grazed his head as he turned to watch the footage on a screen at the rally.
“I thank you all for your thoughts and prayers yesterday. Only God prevented the unthinkable from happening,” he wrote in a message on Sunday.
The assassination attempt made front pages around the world and caught the attention of many world leaders, most of whom condemned the violence and wished Trump a speedy recovery from it. China, a communist totalitarian state that Trump has repeatedly cited as a major threat to the United States, has declined to comment on the incident. The Foreign Ministry said: issued A statement on Sunday said only that the government was “following up” on the assassination attempt and confirmed that genocidal dictator Xi Jinping had “expressed sympathy” for President Trump.
While there have been few comments from the government, the shooting has been widely discussed on regime-controlled social media, and merchandise featuring images of the shooting began appearing on Chinese sites on Saturday. South China Morning Post The first Trump assassination T-shirts appeared at 8:40pm ET, less than three hours after the shooting.
“As soon as we saw the news about the shooting, we put the T-shirts on Taobao even though they weren’t even printed yet. Within three hours, we had more than 2,000 orders from China and the US,” said a seller who gave her name as Li Jingwei. Said of Morning Post. Taobao is a Chinese internet store run by e-commerce giant Alibaba. Li explained that after downloading the image, it takes about one minute to print one T-shirt. Morning Post She said she printed a range of Trump-themed merchandise not just to sell to American buyers, but because of Trump’s popularity in China.
“We only made Trump memorabilia because he has a high chance of winning in this year’s US presidential election and is popular among Chinese netizens,” Li said.
Reuters There were several T-shirts featuring the assassination attempt, some with slogans like “Grazed but not stunned” and “Shooting makes me stronger.” One Chinese T-shirt seller was surprised by “sales that exceeded expectations.”
“I never thought Trump would have so many fans,” said stall owner Zhong Jiachi.
Associated Press Documented The company, which sold Trump-related merchandise on Taobao and rival e-commerce site JD.com, noted that searches for Trump stopped appearing in search results around Monday, possibly to avoid copyright infringement and being targeted by the Communist Party for censorship. The Associated Press reported that sellers were providing “hidden links” to Trump-related products “if asked.” Another workaround was to use “hidden links” to Trump-related products, Trump’s nickname in China.River FoundingCustomers can search for products under nicknames such as “Comrade Nation Builder” and “Comrade Nation Builder,” which first emerged tongue-in-cheek, as users on the regime-controlled social media site Weibo joked that Trump’s policies had supposedly helped China grow and that he was one of the Communist Party’s most successful operatives.
The Associated Press noted, “For a while on Monday, searches including ‘Founding Trump’ turned up results for stores selling T-shirts with photos of the rally, but the results became less effective as the day went on.”
The Associated Press also released an official statement regarding the widespread copyright infringement of Vucci’s photos: “The Associated Press is proud of Evan Vucci’s photography and recognizes its impact. Further, we reserve the rights to this powerful image.”
What’s going on on Weibo, the Chinese social media chat monitoring site? Observed On Sunday, the Chinese Communist Party allowed widespread discussion of the assassination attempt on Weibo, allowing several related topic names to trend. Some of the comments allowed on the site praised Trump’s response to the shooting, while others predicted that the assassination attempt would be decisive in determining whether the “founding state” won in November. One Weibo user even suggested that “What’s on Weibo” — a once-derisive nickname — has now become “a mix of ridicule and affection, highlighting the humorous view Chinese social media users have of Trump and his political shenanigans.”
“We wish our founding comrade a speedy recovery. May he continue to work hard for the ultimate mission entrusted to him by the Party,” said the comment, translated by What’s on Weibo.
In addition to the comments, users also shared memes that edited images of Trump’s bloodied face into communist propaganda posters and portrayed him as a communist hero.
