Since reclaiming the presidency in January 2025, Donald Trump has raked in hundreds of millions by branding his name on everything from digital currencies to Bibles, yet several of his merchandising ventures have stumbled badly and are now coming back to haunt him.
The tale of 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 purchased a $640 Trump watch last year, but what they actually received was not what they expected. They were sent a Rump watch instead.
They reached out to their local television station, WJAR-TV, after TrumpWatches.com did not respond to their inquiries.
“I simply thought it was really elegant. It was stunning. And I knew it would be something she’d appreciate,” Tim Petit told the station about the watch he ordered for his wife, Melanie Petit.
Yet he says she was appalled when the limited-edition timepiece arrived with the word “RUMP” displayed on the dial instead of “TRUMP.”
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As humorous as the manufacturing error might seem to most onlookers, it was no laughing matter for the Middletown couple.
Petit said he bought the watch after hearing Trump tout it in a radio commercial, which ended with the President declaring, “It’s Trump time.”
“It has a nice little case,” Melanie Petit said, indicating her liking for the product. “It has the pink color and little fireworks on it.”
But apparently, the glaring defect on her face brought her to tears.
“I noticed it right away,” she explained. “The T is missing. It just reads R-U-M-P.”
“How could they process this and proceed without verifying their work?” the MAGA voter wondered.
Her husband reacted more strongly to the defective timepiece.
“I’m very disappointed,” he told WJAR-TV. “I wanted to do something special for her. And we expected it would carry the President of the United States’ integrity and proper follow-through.”
Yet that expectation went unmet. Petit contacted the news outlet the day after receiving the watch when his attempts to obtain a response from TrumpWatches.com fell short.
Melanie Petit said the couple did not receive any reply or support when they first reached out to the site.
“We would like this corrected properly and quickly,” Tim Petit stated.
“An apology would be appreciated for making my wife cry,” he added.
The company apologized after WJAR’s inquiry. The seller agreed to replace the watch and offered an $800 voucher to purchase another item on TrumpWatches.com. But there was a caveat. The only other women’s watches then available on the site cost $899.
Thus, they would have to pay an additional $100 to redeem the voucher.
Social media users responded with renewed vigor after the report resurfaced, with many criticizing Petit’s expectation that the merchandise should bear “the integrity of the President of the United States.”
MSN reader Jeanne Grubbs expressed frustration, noting, “What integrity is this out-of-touch man referring to exactly? Integrity means consistently doing the right thing, even in the face of adversity; it means being honest; it means owning up to one’s mistakes.”
But she did not stop there. “The Cheeto-in-Chief has NEVER admitted to his mistakes. Instead, he places blame elsewhere. With more than 30,000 documented and proven lies during his first term alone, it’s clear he has ZERO relationship with honesty. … Personally, I believe Rump is a more accurate branding than his actual name.”
Others agreed. Bitter Blogger wrote, “We expected it would carry the integrity of the President of the United States and proper follow-through. Yet a decade of contrary evidence persists.”
Another reader added, “The fact that most Trump supporters think his status lends any integrity to anything is a complete lie. Even when gilding objects, erecting arches, on currency, it remains an act of defamation. Pure narcissistic self-serving grift.”
The watch fiasco isn’t the only merchandising problem Trump is grappling with.
In addition to more than 500,000 supporters paying $100 deposits for Trump and his sons’ new Trump Mobile phone last summer, which did not ship until last month, there’s a defect with the device.
The American flag printed on the back of the Mobile T1 Smartphone features only 11 stripes instead of the official 13, effectively undermining the patriotic branding.
The flag is meant to display 13 stripes to symbolize the first 13 U.S. colonies that declared their independence from Britain in 1776, according to Newsweek.
