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The White House Gift Shop, which has nothing to do with the actual White House, is selling a challenge coin that marks President Trump’s case of Covid-19.
The $100 memento is part of the shop’s “Historic Moments in History” series of challenge coins that celebrate Trump’s term. There’s a Space Force coin, another that celebrates the appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and one named “Be Bold, Face Fear, Think Big” that celebrates the historic moment in history known as “The Genius Level Thinking & Proven Successes of President Donald J. Trump.”
The copywriting for the coin is as wild as a masked joyride around Walter Reed: “When we heard the sad news of President Trump’s positive COVID test, once again we had faith and prayed but we knew our President would find a way to Knockout COVID in early rounds of this battle,” White House Gift Shop CEO Anthony Giannini writes. “My new design is informed by superhero graphic art because surrounding President Donald J. Trump is a mythos never before seen in a United States president, a mythos not unlike the Epic of Gilgamesh.”
The coin will commemorate moments throughout Trump’s unusual journey to the presidency: his “historic presidential candidacy win” that appears to span “his descent on the elevator in Trump Tower, against an army of highly qualified Republican presidential candidates confluent with Media naysayers—to present day with President Trump’s ascendance over and defeat of the deadly COVID pandemic virus.”
The first 1,500 orders will come with a complimentary “Presidential Blue PPE Mask,” according to the Lititz, Pennsylvania-based White House Gift Shop.
The shop expects to ship the coins beginning November 14.
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
