Donald Trump’s latest grift is hawking garishly jingoistic guitars—and now it’s been slapped with a cease and desist order from famed guitar company Gibson.
Gibson claims that the makers of Trump’s gaudy MAGA guitars played too loosey-goosey with their inspiration, according to Guitar World.
“We can confirm a cease and desist has been issued against 16 Creative as the design infringes upon Gibson’s exclusive trademarks, particularly the iconic Les Paul body shape,” the company said in a statement.
After Trump debuted the grift, online commenters were quick to point out the similarities.
Redditors made fun of the guitars in a post titled “Donald Trump is selling Les Paul copies with bolt-on necks and Trumpbucker pickups,” with many commenters considering the guitar to be a relatively obvious knockoff of the classic Gibson guitar design, frankensteined together with various parts.
“I can’t wait for Gibson to sue the shit out of him for this,” one poster wrote.
The website selling the guitars claims to have sold out of the $11,500 autographed “American Eagle Electric Guitar” and the corresponding $1,500 not-autographed versions. It remains to be seen where that money will go, and whether Gibson will be interested in pursuing it any further.
This isn’t the first time a Trump-related product has run into questions about intellectual property. Shortly after Trump launched his Truth Social platform, many noted that the logo of the Twitter ripoff was conspicuously similar to that of another company.
Considering how almost everything Trump puts his name on is sketchy or an overpriced piece of crap—or both—it isn’t surprising to find out that his “signature” guitars are ripoffs.
Trump’s guitars will now go on the pile of Trump-related gold sneakers, digital trading cards, watches, and bibles that will likely end up on some online auction before inevitably floating on some garbage patch in the middle of the ocean.
