The company behind Donald Trump’s line of gold high-top sneakers has filed a lawsuit alleging trademark and copyright infringement against several retailers accused of marketing and selling knockoff versions of the shoes online. Attorneys for 45Footwear LLC filed the suit in Arizona on Monday but declined to name the defendants, stating they would do so in a forthcoming filing, according to NBC News. They mentioned that the accused are individuals and businesses based outside of the United States but using websites hosted domestically, traced with the help of a specialist online fraud investigator.
Donald Trump’s “Never Surrender” shoes were on display at Sneaker Con at the Philadelphia Convention Center on February 17, 2024. Interestingly, Trump has never been pictured wearing his signature sneakers. However, MAGA congresswoman Lauren Boebert did sport a pair at her victory party in Windsor, Colorado, last week after winning her Republican primary in the state’s 4th congressional district. She showed them off to reporters with “pageant queen energy,” according to The Independent’s John Bowden. Boebert later admitted that her pair were fakes, telling a reporter for the Denver-based outlet Westword: “These are very China, but I’m OK with that. If I could’ve bought the OGs I would have.”
In its filing, the sneaker company asked the federal court to prohibit the illicit reproduction, sale, and advertising of replica versions of its shoes. They are also asking the defendants to turn over “any and all profits” earned from their ventures so far. Alternatively, the plaintiffs are asking the court to award them $2 million for “each and every use” of their counterfeited mark by each defendant and $25,000 for every copyright violation.
The Republican presidential candidate first unveiled his “Never Surrender” shoes to much fanfare at Sneaker Con in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in February. He announced that they would be limited to just 1,000 pairs and would retail for $399, although the shoes were selling on eBay and other marketplaces for much more than that within hours of their unveiling. Trump was actually booed at that event but downplayed the jeers as evidence of “a lot of energy in the room” and said of his latest commercial venture: “This is something that I’ve been talking about for 12 years, 13 years. And I think it’s going to be a big success.”
The shoes, emblazoned with the Stars-and-Stripes at the collar and a “T” for Trump on the side, quickly went viral and were memorably lampooned by James Austin Johnson on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Appearing in character as the former president in a pastiche of the basketball movie White Men Can’t Jump (1992), the comedian claimed wearing them could give ordinary people the chance to experience Trump’s superhuman capacity for self-delusion.
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel also ridiculed Trump over the shoes, branding him “Hair Jordan” and observing that they “look like something you’d wear on a flag day mall walk with Mr. T.” Throughout his career, Trump has put his name on a vast array of products reflecting his glitzy taste. From luxury apartment complexes to steaks, dubious university diplomas, cologne, and digital trading cards, he has rarely spotted a commercial opportunity he does not like, but few have enjoyed the instantly iconic status of his gleaming high-tops.
Rapper 50 Cent raised eyebrows with a social media post about meeting far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) on Wednesday. “Lauren Boebert, Colorado Republican making the White House look good,” the entertainer captioned a photo of them together on X, formerly Twitter. But the “In Da Club” rapper was actually at the Capitol, where he met lawmakers from both sides of the aisle — and posed for photos with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and others — to advocate for more Black representation in the liquor and music industries.
Some people on social media mocked the location error. Scripps News congressional correspondent Nathaniel Reed likened the gaffe to “summer tourists who think the U.S. Capitol is the White House.” Associated Press congressional reporter Farnoush Amiri said it was like her mom “not knowing where I work.” Others, however, brought up that Boebert controversy at a “Beetlejuice” performance last year. 50 Cent responded to those comments on X by saying: “Wait, wait, guys I took pictures with everyone and all you seem to care about is Lauren. What did she do in a dark theater that hasn’t been done, my God!”
Boebert, meanwhile, captioned a photo of the pair: “I’d still love you if you flipped burgers at Burger King. @50Cent, I used to do that myself! Thanks for the photo, great to meet you!” During his visit to Capitol Hill, 50 Cent said he hasn’t decided whom he will vote for in the 2024 election. He has previously claimed to have been offered $500,000 to campaign for Donald Trump in the 2016 election but turned it down because it wasn’t “good money.”
As the sunset disappeared over the Rockies on Tuesday evening, it had already become clear that Lauren Boebert had won. At a venue called The Grainhouse located on “Hoedown Hill” in Windsor, Boebert watched results pour in — not in some back room like your usual politician but largely in front of the crowd, where she mingled with friends and supporters. “Thank you… thank you for doing this,” one weepy younger supporter told the congresswoman, who went in for a hug.
Campaign officials were in a jubilant mood. Drew Sexton, her one-man-band campaign manager, ushered different groups of people to Boebert for photos as children played cornhole nearby. Some of the congresswoman’s allies were even ready to laugh off the eye-wateringly bad headlines from the past few months. “The theater stuff was bad,” one campaign official acknowledged, about Boebert being recently kicked out of a movie theater for vaping and engaging in lewd acts with her date. “But you saw that afterwards, she showed voters she was contrite. She knew she had messed up.”
The Grainhouse is an old grain silo converted into a bar with a spacious outdoor area, and it made for a picturesque background for the campaign. Supporters mingled among old tractors inside a giant tin dome, with cheers breaking out every few minutes as various races were called. Boebert herself led a cheer as Greg Lopez won the special election in CD-04 — she congratulated him over the phone in front of a crowd as she took a break from posing for photos with supporters.
After it was clear from the numbers that she’d won, Boebert would mingle with guests for nearly an hour before departing. That’s something one rarely sees at these kinds of events, where candidates are typically whisked away by aides after a short comment to reporters or maybe a small gaggle. The congresswoman did gaggle with reporters, but it wasn’t in the traditional way: instead, she encouraged them to take pictures with her as she posed in a pair of solid gold-painted Trump sneakers, which she showed off with pageant-queen energy. (She would later admit, in a characteristically Boebert way, that they were not official Trump campaign merchandise but instead counterfeits made in China.)
“Just because I don’t know who my dad is,” she quipped at one point, doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about family. That’s the kind of comparison few members of Congress would ever make out loud. “She’s got ‘it’,” one Boebert campaign staffer said. “I mean, you see it every time she gets up and talks to people. No one is telling her to say this. She’s speaking from the heart.”
That much was clear as Boebert worked the crowd with energy and ease. And some made it clear they wanted her to take her victory even further. One older man wearing a white Trump hat came up to Boebert’s campaign manager and made him an offer he likely could refuse: the chance to run a Senate campaign in 2026. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, is up for re-election in the upper chamber that year. The man in the Trump hat thought it was time to bring a MAGA-style challenge to him. The man indicated after that he wanted Boebert herself to run — though he seemed to joke that he would run himself if she didn’t. Hickenlooper, he said, “shouldn’t be in [the Senate].”
Boebert’s campaign manager, Sexton, quipped that he was just trying to “get through the next day” in response, but added that he’d take the man’s suggestion to Boebert. Supporters at the party unanimously told The Independent that they were glad Boebert had moved districts to the safer-Republican fourth. Many expressed the belief that she would “fight” for conservative values in Congress. Others at the party made it clear that Boebert’s presence in the often-forgotten eastern plains of Colorado had helped her appear serious and engaged to her new constituents.
A large contingent of younger Republicans — especially women — were present along with the typical politician’s older-skewing crowd. Boebert has seemingly won over a number of young Republican women who see themselves (or someone they know and admire) in the congresswoman. While several rivals had talked a big game heading into Election Day, it was clear that those words had been little more than projections of false confidence. That included Deborah Flora, who wrongly told The Independent that the race had become “a two-woman contest” just minutes before polls closed in her district (she actually came in third, trailing one of the other would-be rivals, Jerry Sonnenberg.)
Meanwhile, Boebert was all smiles right up to the end — and has reason to be smiling still today.
Source: NBC News, The Independent, Westword
