U.S. Senator Angry At 'White House Gift Shop' For Selling Trump Indictment Coin

Sen. Bill Cassidy won’t be buying the new coin commemorating former President Donald Trump’s federal indictment, thank you very much.

The Louisiana Republican posted a video to Twitter on Monday in which he denounces the White House Gift Shop for hawking the “limited edition” trinket, calling it his “outrage of the week.”

“Whatever you think about it, whatever party you are, you’ve gotta admit that it’s poor taste, that it’s capitalizing upon something without his permission,” Cassidy said while walking.

He added, “Have a sense of decency, White House Gift Shop.”

The White House Gift Shop is not affiliated with the White House where President Joe Biden works. It is a private company with an online store that sells White House-themed coins, ornaments, hats, keychains and other trinkets.

The senator linked to the company’s soon-to-come coin featuring Trump’s recent federal indictment in the classified documents probe. The company is also selling a separate coin commemorating Trump’s earlier indictment on state charges in New York for allegedly falsifying business records. Each coin will set you back $100.

It’s not clear from his tweet whether Cassidy understands there is no affiliation between the White House and the gift shop that bears its name. His video makes no mention of the Biden administration ― only the White House Gift Shop ― so it’s possible he’s disgusted with what he knows to be a privately run online store.

A spokesperson for Cassidy on Capitol Hill referred HuffPost to the senator’s campaign, noting that the tweet came from Cassidy’s campaign account, not his official government account. The senator’s campaign did not immediately respond to a question about the gift shop tweet.

Twitter users added a note to Cassidy’s tweet explaining that the White House Gift Shop is not a federal entity. They linked to an Associated Press story from last year debunking a claim that Biden had “dedicated two commemorative coins” to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Those coins, too, were sold by the private gift shop and not the White House.

The AP noted that while the store may have been associated with the White House when it was created in the 1940s, “that is no longer the case.”

“The White House Gift Shop is privatized,” the shop’s CEO told the AP. (Snopes has an in-depth rundown of the gift shop’s history.)

Cassidy isn’t the first senator to be offended by the actions of this privately owned online knickknack seller. In 2020, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted that the White House Gift Shop planned to produce coins commemorating the COVID-19 pandemic.

“If the White House Gift Shop is going to produce $100 COVID-19 coins, Trump can sure as hell utilize the Defense Production Act to manufacture the gloves, gowns, and masks our medical workers desperately need,” the progressive lawmaker tweeted.

Although Cassidy seems happy to defend Trump from commemorative-coin insults, the Louisiana lawmaker does not necessarily approve of the former president’s behavior. He was one of just seven GOP senators to vote to convict Trump on his impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Our Constitution and our country is more important than any one person,” Cassidy said at the time. “I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.”