MAGA's Grief Grift
How Trump and his allies are monetizing the dead
There was a time when political movements paused, at least briefly, in the face of tragedy. Those norms are gone. In the modern MAGA ecosystem, tragedy is not an interruption to fundraising. It is a business opportunity.
Consider what just happened in Arizona.
After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, allies of his movement quickly pushed legislation to create a specialty state license plate honoring him. Drivers would have paid about $25 annually, with roughly $17 of each fee routed into a fund benefiting a nonprofit aligned with Turning Point USA. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed the bill, warning that it would inject partisan politics into a government program that should remain neutral.
That explanation was diplomatic.
The more honest description is simpler: the proposal was an attempt to turn a political assassination into a state-sanctioned merch drop.
Turning Point USA already operates one of the most relentless merchandising operations in American politics. Anyone who has watched one of its rallies knows the script by heart: a speech about cultural collapse, a rant about universities, a pledge to fight off “wokeism” in the most apocalyptic terms. All the while, a chyron scrolls across the screen to pull out your phone and text a number to buy merch.
Hats, hoodies, flags, stickers. Every rally doubles as a retail event and every speech becomes a sales funnel. Politics becomes branding and identity becomes merchandise.
The proposed license plate would simply have extended that model. Instead of selling another hoodie online, the state of Arizona would have manufactured the merch itself.
Think about the elegance of the grift: a government-issued product, displayed on thousands of cars, renewed every year. Every bumper becomes a billboard and every registration renewal becomes another donation. It is the ultimate subscription model for political merchandising.
This is not an isolated example. The MAGA fundraising machine has increasingly discovered something powerful: death sells.
The latest example comes straight from Donald Trump himself and it is absolutely reprehensible.