T-shirts and other merchandise featuring images of former President Donald Trump in the moments immediately after surviving an assassination attempt began appearing on Chinese e-commerce sites mere hours after the historic event, multiple outlets documented.
The Associated Press – whose photographer Evan Vucci was credited for taking one of the most widely shared photos of a bloodied Trump raising a fist after getting shot – found online shops on popular Chinese websites selling inexpensive T-shirts with that image and several others late on Saturday. The shops are on Chinese-language websites in many cases catering to Chinese customers, indicating that the incident has become a popular conversation topic in China despite widespread communist censorship of international news.
Trump was attending a presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday when shots rang out, hitting the candidate in the right ear and injuring several others. One person, rallygoer Corey Comperatore, was killed after using his body to shield his wife and daughter from the gunfire. Law enforcement officials identified a 20-year-old man named Thomas Matthew Crooks as the shooter and eliminated him on the scene.
Trump himself said in statements after the incident that he came extremely close to being killed, as the shot barely missed his head because he turned to look at a graphic on a screen at the rally venue.
“Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and prayers yesterday, as it was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” he wrote in a message on Sunday.
The attempted assassination has made front-page headlines around the world and attracted the attention of leaders of a host of major countries, the vast majority condemning the violence and wishing Trump a swift recovery from the incident. China, a communist totalitarian regime that Trump has repeatedly identified as a major threat to the United States, reserved its comment on the matter. The Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Sunday saying only that the government was “following” the assassination attempt and confirming that genocidal dictator Xi Jinping “expressed sympathies” to Trump.
Despite the minimal commentary from the government, the shooting became a topic of widespread discussion on regime-controlled social media and merchandise featuring images from the shooting began to appear on Chinese sites on Saturday. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post documented the appearance of the first Trump assassination t-shirt to occur at 8:40 p.m. Eastern, less than three hours after the shooting.
“We put the T-shirts on Taobao as soon as we saw the news about the shooting, though we hadn’t even printed them, and within three hours we saw more than 2,000 orders from both China and the US,” a vendor identified as Li Jinwei told the Morning Post. Taobao is a Chinese internet store run by the e-commerce giant Alibaba. Li explained that, after downloading an image, it takes her shop about one minute to print a single t-shirt. Li told the Morning Post that she had printed various Trump-themed products because of his popularity in China, not just to sell to American buyers.
“For this year’s US presidential election, we only made souvenirs of Trump, as he has a higher chance of winning the election, and he is popular among Chinese netizens,” Li was quoted as saying.
Reuters found several options of T-shirts featuring the assassination attempt, several carrying slogans such as “Grazed but not Dazed” and “Shooting Makes Me Stronger.” One Chinese t-shirt vendor marveled that sales “exceeded my expectations.”
“I didn’t expect that Trump would have so many fans,” vendor Zhong Jiachi said.
The Associated Press documented the Trump products on Taobao and another rival e-commerce site, JD.com, but noted that searches for Trump stopped yielding results around Monday, potentially to avoid getting targeted for copyright violations or censored by the Communist Party. The AP observed that, “when asked,” vendors offered “hidden links” to their Trump products. Another workaround was to use Trump’s nickname in China, “Chuan Jianguo” or “Comrade Nationbuilder,” to search for products. The nickname initially surfaced ironically, as users on the regime-controlled social media site Weibo joked that Trump was one of the most successful operatives in the Communist Party because his policies allegedly helped China grow.
“For a time Monday, searches that included ‘Trump Jianguo’ turned up shops selling T-shirts with images from the rally — though that worked less well as the day went on,” AP noted.
The Associated Press also issued an official comment on the widespread copyright infringement of Vucci’s photo: “The Associated Press is proud of Evan Vucci’s photo and recognizes its impact. In addition, we reserve our rights to this powerful image.”
What’s on Weibo, a site that monitors social media chatter in China, observed on Sunday that the Communist Party was allowing widespread discussion of the assassination attempt on Weibo, allowing multiple relevant topic names to trend. Some of the comments allowed on the site were complimentary to Trump’s response to the shooting, while others predicted that the attempt would cement “Chuan Jianguo”‘s victory in November. What’s on Weibo even suggested that the once derisive nickname now “reflects a blend of mockery and affection, highlighting the humorous perspective Chinese social media users have towards Trump and his political antics.”
“I wish Comrade Jianguo a speedy recovery, may he continue to work hard for the ultimate mission entrusted to him by the Party,” one comment translated by What’s on Weibo read.
In addition to commentary, users shared memes editing the image of Trump’s bloodied face into communist propaganda posters, portraying him as a communist hero.
Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.
