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Donald Trump’s 19-Year-Old Granddaughter Did What Grandpa Could Not

Slate ·
Donald Trump’s 19-Year-Old Granddaughter Did What Grandpa Could Not

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When we last checked in on Kai Trump, it was because the then-18-year-old budding influencer and eldest grandchild of President Donald Trump had Marie Antoinette’d her way through an Erewhon and posted an inane YouTube vlog about it. Did Kai learn anything from the resulting class rage and mockery? It’s unclear. What is clear is that this month she is starting college, where she is poised to get rich off endorsement deals, and she has a new line of merch on top of that. She has also not been deterred from vlogging about her shopping trips . Kai Trump’s college era has arrived, and it’s going to be a doozy.

Kai is attending the University of Miami, where she will play on the women’s golf team. (If you want to feel positively ancient, I will point you toward her Instagram profile , on which she identifies herself as part of the class of ’30.) Insight into how she’s feeling at such a big moment of transition can be found, sort of, in her most recent YouTube video, titled “ Shopping for My First College Apartment !” What’s on her mind is … that new line of merch she has! It’s called the Kai Signature Collection. It’s a bit of a bait and switch that her shopping video starts with essentially a commercial, behind-the-scenes footage of a photo shoot for the line (featuring Kai’s friends and some drone shots of them on a beach), but having followed Kai’s prior endeavors with merch—namely, the $130 sweatshirt with an unattractive KT logo she started selling last fall —I was curious to see what she was offering this time. It’s still fairly plain items with her initials slapped on them, but now, in addition to sweatshirts, she’s got T-shirts, hats, and tote bags, and you can get them in a wider variety of colors. However, they’re less exorbitantly priced, and the logo has been improved by being enclosed in a circle (and some items feature a different, scriptier KT logo instead), so I guess these are a little less offensive than the previous batch.

None of which changes, though, the fact that on a very basic level, I don’t understand who could possibly want this. But that mythic consumer is real, apparently. “I’ve been SO blown away by all of the support for this merch drop!” Kai wrote on Instagram earlier this week . “Because of the amazing response,” she added, the store will be “extending” the merch drop for a few extra days. She urged her followers to “shop the collection before we officially close it on Wednesday.” I’m not sure why the collection has to “close,” seeing as it’s an online retailer—not that I would ever accuse a member of the Trump family of having a flexible relationship with the truth.

As fun as it must be to “design” T-shirts, for the moment, at least, Kai is likely making the bulk of her money in endorsements. After a rule change five years ago, student athletes are now permitted by the NCAA to profit off their names and likenesses, and Kai is well positioned to cash in, having already scored at least three major endorsement deals.

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