Trump’s Photoshopped NFTs appear to use images from the Internet
For the past 24 hours, fans of ex-President Donald Trump have been huddled in their chairs, waiting with bated breath for a supposed announcement that the one-time tweeter-in-chief promised would blow their socks off. He posted a video to his Truth Social page which shows a photo of him in some kind of superhero outfit, sporting glasses he certainly isn’t wearing, as laser beams shoot from his eyes. What could this mean? What apocalypse came?
On Thursday, the big surprise was finally revealed, and it was nothing but another terrible NFT project which, in Trump’s words, featured “amazing ART in my life and career!” these”digital trading cards” is actually just another NFT project with money, but the low quality images and the company responsible for the project is a more complicated puzzle.
Each NFT retails for a total of $99, and some are limited as 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, a big fan of Mr. Trump will be “guaranteed” a ticket to a future gala dinner with him, apparently at his Mar a Lago residence in South Florida. The auction even promised to pay for transportation. So yes, spend $4,455 and you too can sit down with the former president himself. Although we can guarantee you he won’t look nearly as slim as he does in these trading cards.
The images were so lazy that based on reverse image searches, they were edited images scraped off the internet. It is unclear whether they were edited by hand or perhaps created with AI image generation, although one image of Trump in a hunting outfit bears a very clear resemblance to waders made by Banded, a hunting apparel company.
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Trump’s cowboy outfit seems to match one leather vacuum cleaner made by Scully Sportswear, a California-based costume and western store.
Gizmodo reached out to both companies to see if they had any agreement with the NFT Project to apparently use their products, but we didn’t immediately hear back.
It’s all bizarre in so many different ways. In a video of Trump promoting the project, Trump claims he is “better than [Abraham] Lincoln, better than [George] Washington.” He then says “each card comes with an automatic chance to win amazing prizes like dinner with me. I don’t know if it’s a fantastic prize, but it’s what we have.”
And while your first assumption would be that all of that money would go to support Trump’s re-election campaign, you’d be wrong, at least according to the company’s side. NFT INT LLC, the company listed as the host of the NFT auction, wrote:
“These digital trading cards are not political and have nothing to do with any political campaign. NFT INT LLC is owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates. NFT INT LLC uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and likeness under a paid license from CIC Digital LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked in accordance with the Terms.”
Gizmodo reached out to NFT INT to get a better understanding of how this 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, gives its address as a kitschy strip mall in Utah which contains a few shops and restaurants, a dry cleaner, as well as a UPS store. As Gizmodo has previously reported, companies associated with attempts to buy Trump’s preferred social media platform Truth Social have made efforts similar arrangements by being based from a UPS Store mailbox.
It is even more unclear who is operating behind the scenes. Gizmodo found two companies called NFT INT registered in California and in Delaware, neither of which are located in Utah, of course.
We’ve reached out to the person listed as the CEO of the California-registered LLC and will update the story if we learn more.
So if you’re really interested in the idea of a Trump NFT, for whatever reason, just be aware that the NFTs are “non-refundable” and “non-returnable.” Of course, you could just do what we did and right-click and “save as”, but that would defeat the purpose of digital scarcity, wouldn’t it?
