CNN tracked Trump’s watch to a building in Sheridan, Wyoming—and found strange ties to a “male enhancement honey” company with a similar name.
Last month, Donald Trump announced that he was selling limited-edition, gaudy watches ranging from $499 to the bargain price of $100,000, bragging about their Swiss-made precision.
But a CNN investigation traced the watches’ origin to a shopping center in remote Sheridan, Wyoming, where TheBestWatchesOnEarth LLC, the company behind the timepieces, is based. There’s no indication that a watch company is located at the building listed at the address, only a daycare. Its neighbors include an H&R Block, a Wendy’s, and a “vape and hemp smoke shop.”
CNN couldn’t find the people behind the company either, because the business’s location allows it to legally hide those details from the public. The news network found that knocking on the door of the business’s supposed address didn’t answer those questions. Interestingly, the limited liability corporation behind Trump’s infamous gold sneakers is also based at the address, along with other random businesses. The watch company was registered on July 29, only two months before Trump announced the watch line.
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I just don’t understand how the place isn’t shut down already.
They know the “business” behind the product is some shady LLC in a warehouse in Wyoming. There are no watches being produced there. There are no sneakers being produced there. And there never will be. This is a money laundering scheme and nothing more. And even if they do get some rubes dumb enough to part with their money, their orders will just be “temporarily delayed” while the customer is sent circling around LLC hell trying to get a refund on a product that never existed in the first place.
Seriously. $100,000 watches? Who the fuck is the target audience for this? Even if it were on the up-and-up (it isn’t), there’s only a sliver of a sliver of the population who could afford to even if they wanted to. And you’re not going to reach them through some random late-night commercial on OANN. If this were a legit product made by a legit company, their entire sales wing would have known that commercials targeting inbred hicks at 3:00 in the morning is a complete waste of money.
Trump and whoever else is behind this should have just quietly taken out a couple of back-of-the-magazine ads in some no-name magazine to give their product a veneer of legitimacy and then just quietly did their crime stuff with nobody being any wiser. But no, this is Trump, who must always, always pick the worst and most absurdly inane option available. Every time. Like picking a smart choice would cause him torturous pain or something. I’ve never seen a man who so masterfully looks at all of the options available to him, and somehow manages to come up with and select an exponentially worse option with such consistency.
Cops have better things to do than shutting down obvious money laundering enterprises - like, shaking down obvious money laundering enterprises for a cut of the action.
I lived in Daytona Beach a few years ago, and one day I noticed that a small store had opened up that sold nothing but Super-Whisks, plastic whisks that cost $1 each. They were never open (a hand-written sign said the nail salon next door had a couple of whisks if you wanted one) and they were a quarter of a mile from a Publix and three dollar stores, all of which also sold $1 plastic whisks, so they weren’t exactly satisfying an unmet demand. The most ridiculously obvious money laundry I’ve ever seen and yet they were never investigated by anyone.
There was an old video store that opened up in my neighborhood in the late 80s. Now it did have an adult section in the back, so there was at least a hint of legitimate business. Now remember. I’m saying late 80s here. VHS. A circulation of movies that was never updated. For decades. Well, well beyond VHS’s expiration date. But when you walked in there, that’s what you saw. “Modern-day” movies like Roadhouse and Howard the Duck. In like 2005. And when you walked in, the guy at the counter gave you a look as if you were definitely not welcome, and even the adult section (where I figured the “real” business took place) was “closed”.
The place closed down sometime during the late 00s, but to this day I firmly believe the store was a front for some kind of mob operation and money laundering and the adult section was for…<ahem>members only, ifyaknowwhatimean.
Trump fanatics with a lot of money. Which if even one person buys one (And Im sure someone has) The entire charade becomes worth it.
My money is on it being a way to get around political donation limits - if you’re buying a product, you aren’t donating. Elon can buy a handful of these to give out to his buddies, and it doesn’t count as donating a million dollars to Trump’s campaign.
If the business were actually about selling watches (which like you said, it isn’t) it would still make sense to have an extremely expensive model as a sales tactic so that the affordable ones seem more valuable. Another example of this is the $10,000 solid gold Apple Watch. Obviously they don’t expect to sell many watches at that price when the battery is sealed into the device and it’s guaranteed to fail after a few years, but it exists just to make the normal models seem fancy by proxy.
Oh, I absolutely agree. But when was the last time you saw a Rolex ad in the middle of a Duck Dynasty rerun or something? Any company able to actually produce and sell watches worth $100k is going to know who their target audience is and how to reach them.
Trump’s commercials scream less of an attempt to reach people who may genuinely be interested in his product (He’d probably be better off selling them at his golf courses), and more of an attempt to be able to say that there was even a product in the first place when people eventually start questioning where $15,000,000 magically appeared from. Point to the ads, say all 147 of them were bought by clients who wished to remain anonymous, and say you closed up shop after they were sold. Money laundering made easy.
Appliance stores uses that tactic all the time, the 2000 fridge doesn’t look at expensive when is side to side with a 10000 one.