‘I’m not going to run out of customers’: Traveling Trump-gear salesman sets up in CdA

Last week a man walked into Triple B Guns in Coeur d’Alene and asked owner Kinsey Boyle if he could sell President Donald Trump merchandise in her parking lot.

Being a Trump supporter herself, Boyle said yes.

“You kind of have to be a Trump supporter if you’re a gun store,” Boyle said.

The man with the van full of Trump gear, Jimmy, declined to give his last name to The Spokesman-Review. He says he is a 28-year-old photographer who travels the country in his white van. A few months ago he was looking for a way to make some extra money and thought selling Trump gear would be a great way to support Trump’s re-election and have extra income.

Such efforts are becoming common as the fall election nears.

“Gun shops are what I figured out works best,” he said. “This kind of brings a bit of business into them too.”

He said he drives to a new place when business seems to dry up.

Jimmy said he had never seen a popup Trump stand like his before, but since opening, he has heard about similar stands and shops in other areas.

And those rumors are true: shops selling Trump gear have sprung up everywhere from Missoula to the tourist town of Keystone, South Dakota, near Mount Rushmore.

The Coeur d’Alene stand features Trump 2020 flags, Nancy Pelosi toilet paper, Trump hats and a recent addition of Trump on a flag photoshopped into a scene from Rambo. He said he’s waiting for Trump 2020 masks to arrive soon.

He offers a sign that pictures the acronym LGBT with a new meaning. L is for liberty, G is for gun, B is for beer and T is for Trump. Jimmy said he has seen a positive response to the sign, especially from gay people.

“I’m not against trans people, gay people, lesbians, anything like that,” he said. “I don’t like it all being put together for political use.”

As the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality has gained traction in recent months, sales of American flags with a blue line, meant to support law enforcement officers, have increased as well.

Jimmy said he thinks Trump merchandise has become so popular “because Trump is like a comedian in ways, too.”

As the presidential election nears in November, Jimmy said sales are increasing.

“People are desperate to keep Trump in office,” he said.

With his stand on a major road in Coeur d’Alene, Jimmy said he gets lots of hecklers. A woman recently came up and asked him how much a flag was. When he told her $20, she replied, “That’s all it costs to be a white supremacist?”

Jimmy said he’s not racist and neither is Trump.

“If (Trump) was a racist, I wouldn’t be voting for him,” Jimmy said, citing the fact that he himself is “part Arab” and has “Mexican brothers.”

The heckling most often comes in the form of passing cars yelling at him, Jimmy said. But people rarely come up and engage in a conversation about his views.

Boyle said the Trump stand hasn’t hindered Triple B’s sales of its own supply of Trump stickers and hats but instead has encouraged people to stop in.

Jimmy said he doesn’t know how long he’ll stay at the location but plans to head to Montana next.

“There’s plenty of people that support Trump,” he said. “I’m not going to run out of customers.”