OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Former President Donald Trump elicited emotional responses on Saturday when he made a surprise visit to Sneaker Con in Pennsylvania, an event where he highlighted a line of some expensive, limited-run golden sneakers.
Known as “The Greatest Sneaker Show On Earth,” Trump’s unannounced drop-in came shortly before he headed to Michigan for a campaign rally, Fox News reported.
“Taking the stage at the event in Philadelphia, Trump appeared before a crowd of emotional attendees, some of whom cheered on the president as others booed him during his speech,” Fox noted.
He spoke for about 10 minutes before appearing alongside the branded golden sneakers which were selling for $399 a pair and which sold out online shortly thereafter. According to reports, the golden sneakers were a limited run of 1,000 pairs.
“A lot of emotion. There’s a lot of emotion in this room,” Trump said shortly after he took to the podium. “They have lines going all around the block. They’ve never seen anything like this one.”
“I just want to tell you, you know, I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. I have some incredible people that work with me on things, and they came up with this,” Trump continued. “This is something I’ve been talking about for 12 years, 13 years, and I think it’s going to be a big success.”
CIC Ventures, the same company that made the Trump trading cards, is handling the sneaker sales.
“They love it, and they love what we’ve done,” Trump said as he flashed the shoes to those in the audience. “That’s the real deal.”
He added that the most important thing people could do was to cast a ballot for him in the November election as he vowed to “turn this country around fast.”
Trump’s appearance came a day after New York Judge Arthur Engoron fined him $364 million and barred him from running a business in the state for three years as part of NY Attorney General Letitia James’ civil fraud lawsuit against him.
The amount of the fine was heavily criticized, including by some liberal legal experts, including Georgetown University Law School Prof. Jonathan Turley.
“Well, this court really proved Oscar Wilde’s rule that ‘The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.’ Because the court has done everything short of ordering that Trump be thrown into a wood chipper. He’s imposed almost the maximum amount that James requested. He’s barring him from doing business in the city where he’s an iconic business figure, barring him from getting loans,” the professor began.
“The last part is particularly ironic because the banks not only said that they were not victims and did not complain about the alleged fraud, but they said that they wanted to do more business with Trump. They described him as a ‘whale’ client. So this is all being done essentially in their name as victims, even though no one lost any money,” he said.
“None of us could find a case like this. Yet, the first one, you have this fortune that is being demanded by the court to be turned over. I think there are real problems here. I think that this is going to have the same impact on some appellate judges. There have to be some limits, including Constitutional limits on the size of penalties, this is confiscatory and, in my view, just excessive,” he added.
“You know, I think there’s a major appeal obviously that will come. I was hoping the court would defy its critics and show a more moderate response. To show that yes, there were assets that were undervalued and overvalued, but to impose a more reasonable fine,” Turley said.
