President Donald Trump has made hundreds of millions of dollars by slapping his name on everything from cryptocurrency to Bibles since retaking office in January 2025, but now several of his merchandising ventures have hit disastrous snags and are coming back to haunt him.
The story about a MAGA voter demanding an apology after a pricey Trump watch for his wife arrived with a defect is making headlines again after “The Daily Show” revived it in a May 22 segment.
A Rhode Island couple bought a $640 Trump watch last year, but that’s not what they got. A Rump watch arrived instead.
They contacted their local news station, WJAR-TV, after they didn’t get the response they wanted from TrumpWatches.com.
“I just thought it was really nice. It was beautiful. And I knew it would be something that she’d like,” Tim Petit told the station about the watch he ordered for his wife, Melanie Petit.
But he says she was horrified when the limited-edition timepiece arrived with “RUMP” on the face instead of “TRUMP.”
As funny as the manufacturing mistake may be to most observers, it was no joke to the Middletown couple.
Petit told the TV station he bought the ticker after hearing Trump hawking the watch in a radio ad, which the president ended by declaring, “It’s Trump time.”
“It has a nice little case,” Melanie Petit said, indicating she liked it. “It has the pink and little fireworks on it.”
But apparently, the glaring mistake on her face brought her to tears.
“I noticed it right away,” she explained. “The T is missing. It just says R-U-M-P.”
“How could they process this and go through something without checking their work?” the MAGA voter wondered.
Her husband reacted more harshly to the defective timepiece.
“I’m very disappointed,” he told WJAR-TV. “I wanted to do a special thing for her. And we expected that it would have the integrity of the President of the United States and good follow-through.”
But it didn’t. Petit contacted the news station the following day after receiving the watch when he didn’t get the response he was looking for from TrumpWatches.com.
Melanie Petit said the couple did not receive a response or any support when they first contacted the site.
“We would like this corrected properly and quickly,” Tim Petit stated.
“An apology would be nice for making my wife cry,” he added.
The company apologized after WJAR reached out. The seller agreed to replace the watch and added an $800 voucher for them to buy another item on TrumpWatches.com. But there was a catch. The only other ladies’ watches for sale on the site at the time cost $899.
So, they’d have had to fork over another $100 to use the coupon.
Social media exploded again after the story resurfaced, with many taking offense at Petit expecting “that it would have the integrity of the President of the United States.”
MSN reader Jeanne Grubbs exasperatedly pointed out, “What integrity is this out-of-touch man referring to exactly? Integrity means always doing the right thing, even in the face of adversity; it means being honest; it means owning up to your mistakes.”
But she wasn’t finished. “The Cheeto-in-Chief has NEVER owned up to his mistakes. Instead, he blames everyone else. With over 30K documented and proven LIES during his first term alone, it is clear that he has ZERO relationship with honesty. … Personally, I think Rump is much more accurate branding than his actual name.”
Others agreed. Bitter Blogger wrote, “’We expected it would have the integrity of the President of the United States and good follow-through.’ Despite a decade of evidence to the contrary.”
Another reader added, “The fact that most Trump cultists believe that his status somehow adds any integrity to anything, is an absolute lie. Even when adorning objects with gold, erecting arcs, on the front of currency, it is still an act of defamation. Pure narcissistic self-serving grift.”
The watch debacle isn’t the only merchandising problem Trump is facing.
In addition to more than 500,000 supporters forking over $100 deposits for Trump and sons’ new Trump Mobile phone last summer, which didn’t ship until last month, there’s a defect on the phone.
The American flag printed on the back of the Mobile T1 Smartphone has only 11 stripes instead of the official 13, making the “patriotic” branding a moot point.
The flag is supposed to show 13 stripes to represent the first 13 U.S. colonies that, in 1776, declared their independence from Britain, according to Newsweek.
