What’s next for the MAGA merchants of Etsy? More Trump.
While the former president has been banned from Shopify, independent sellers are still pushing Trump gear.
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Jonathan Babin sells small, faux-marble Mount Rushmores on his Etsy account for $19.99. On the extreme right side of the statue, next to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, rests the chiseled visage of Donald Trump.
The former president looks as he did during his time in the White House, sticking out like a sore thumb among the other presidents, though Babin has equipped him with a slightly sharper chin and a stout, flattop-like haircut. “Originally it was a gift idea for my boss,” he tells me, over Etsy’s messaging platform. “He sent a picture [of the sculpture] to a few of his friends and all of a sudden I had 20 orders.” Currently, it is one of two items on Babin’s shop — the other is a homemade salt-and-pepper shaker set shaped like Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets — but the Trump Rushmore set is by far Babin’s most successful venture. “We’ve sold over 150,” he says, adding that he’s only noticed a brief dip in sales since the election. “I think the only reason they went down was because all my customers were in jail from the Capitol events.”