Republicans Are Using Trump's Mugshot To Raise Tons Of Cash For Themselves

Republican candidates across the country have already started using Donald Trump's mugshot from Georgia in their online fundraising campaigns, and the cash is starting to pour in. Donald Trump broke the ice by using it on Thursday even shortly after it was released, and House and Senate Republicans followed suit shortly after that. But some Democrats are getting in on the action, too, proving that there's always an opportunity to make money, no matter which side of the aisle you are on. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Well, that didn't take long did it, folks? Donald Trump is already out there selling his mugshot on t-shirts, on beer coozies, on mugs, on anything you can print on. And he is selling that Georgia mugshot raising as much money as possible, which of course is what every single person with a brain predicted would happen. Donald Trump is never going to pass up the opportunity to make some money, and by God, that mugshot is basically like him printing his own money at this point. But it's not just Trump. Apparently other Republicans have decided, wait a minute, there is a big old cash cow sitting out there. And by golly, I'm gonna go milk it. Let's see what I can get into my bucket, right? Marshall Blackburn on Friday sent out the mugshot in a fundraising email telling people I'm raising money for Donald Trump and his legal defense. You know, as if the billionaire with a hundred million dollars in a super PAC doesn't have money.

Um, she's like, here's a buckshot. Look at this. This is terrible what they're doing. Give me money so I can give it to Trump. And then of course, the fine print says every $99 out of every a hundred dollars raised will actually go to Marsha Blackburn. So she's literally giving him 1% of what's raised, but she's using his mugshot to do it. In fact, it's gotten so bad with Republican candidates out there using Trump's mugshot to raise money, uh, that you had, uh, Chris, uh, LaCivita, who was a Trump advisor, he had to put this on social media. He said, if you are a campaign political action committee scammer and you try raising money off the mugshot of real Donald Trump and you have not received prior permission, we are coming after you. You will not scam donors.

So it's gotten so bad that Trump's campaign is coming out there like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't, you can't use this picture without our permission. You can't do it. You know, we are the ones making the money. Here's the, you don't own that picture. Like, yes, it is a picture of you, but that is actually the property of the state of Georgia and it's now public record. So anybody, anybody can go out there and sell merch with that mugshot on it. You don't own that, which I'm sure is why Mr. Savita, uh, uh, did not mention that we will take legal action against you because you can't take legal action against those people. The state of Georgia actually might be able to. Um, I haven't looked into what their laws are regarding that. And you know, again, it's a mugshot and yes it is of Donald Trump, but it's not his intellectual property. So there's some gray area there, but basically Trump's people can't do anything about the fact that other Republicans are fundraising off of this. Now, what I wanna see happen is I wanna see Democrats raising money off this. I think that mugshot needs to be at every democratic

Fundraising email out there, every text message they send that we get. And even though we didn't sign up for 'em, I got one from Chuck Schumer the other day. sure. Never signed up for that. Uh, but anyway, put it in there and say, do you want this man running this country? I think that's a powerful message. Like, here's a man who was just arrested in Georgia. He's been indicted four different times.