Our big boy president has run a lot of businesses into the ground. There was Trump Airlines, Trump Steaks, Trump Mortgages, and Trump University (you probably remember how that one ended), just to name a few. There was also Trump Vodka. Introduced in 2005, long before the reality TV show host became the leader of the free world, it was expected (by Trump) to overtake the premium vodka market, dominating brands like Grey Goose. It did not.
While the brand itself ceased production in 2011—back when private citizen Donald was just a simple 60-something tweeting about Barney Frank's nipples—a collector's market has since emerged on Ebay. Munchies reports that empty bottles of Trump Vodka run anywhere from $25 to $100, and sealed bottles of the stuff are priced as high as $1,000.
The scarcity of Trump Vodka bottles and the lunacy of Trump supporters makes it only natural that a market for this kind of thing exists. That doesn't make it any less depressing, even as a gag gift. And, like everything our grifter-in-chief touches, their scarcity has a suspicious backstory. Apparently, 500,000 extra bottles never saw shelves, because Trump stiffed the people who were making them. Bloomberg has the story on that:
Trump Vodka was not doing well. “We couldn’t buy the glass because we didn’t have the money to buy the glass,” Kenny says of the bottles. “If we couldn’t buy the glass, we couldn’t produce it. If we couldn’t produce it, we couldn’t ship it.” The chief financial officer quit and wasn’t replaced.
The original glassmaker, Bruni Glass, run by Roberto Del Bon, sued over unpaid invoices. He melted half a million Trump Vodka mini-bottles, he says, casting them back into the fire.
This is probably the least surprising fact about Trump Vodka. More interesting is the story about how Trump Vodka saw a resurgence as a Passover-approved drink in Israel, until its kosher credentials turned out to be fake. Oy vey.
Here's hoping America fares better than Trump's foray into booze. We'll be at the bar.
