Former President Donald Trump is a real estate mogul, one-time game show host, and recently Bible salesman.
Trump made $300,000 promoting Bibles this year, according to financial disclosure forms released Thursday. The Bible, released in March, cost $59.99 and was dubbed the Lee Greenwood Bible, referencing the singer of the song “God Bless the U.S.A.” (The song is a staple at Trump rallies with the former president often walking out on stage to it). There is also a limited edition version of the Bible featuring Trump’s signature that goes for $1,000.
“I want to have a lot of people have it,” Trump said in a promotional video for the Bible on his social media platform Truth Social. “You have to have it for your heart, for your soul.”
Trump is extremely popular with evangelical Christians. A Pew poll released in March just a few weeks prior to the Bible’s release found that 67% of White Protestant evangelicals had a favorable view of Trump, the highest approval rating of any religious group in the U.S., followed by White Catholics and non-evangelical White Protestants.
“Religion is so important, and it’s so missing,” Trump said in the video. “It’s going to come back and it’s going to come back strong, like our country is going to come back strong.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Around the time Trump was hawking the Bible, he had begun endorsing a series of other products, including gold high-top sneakers, NFTs, and perfumes. Like the Bible, the sneakers and perfumes licensed Trump’s name but were not manufactured or distributed by him or any companies associated with him.
Last year, Trump reported earnings somewhere between $100,000 to $1 million for the NFT collection, according to a separate filing from April 2023. The sneakers Trump promoted sold for $399, and their launch came the day after a judge forced his company, the Trump Organization, to pay a $355 million penalty in a civil fraud case.
Trump has faced mounting legal bills as a result of his myriad court cases. Two months before Trump started promoting the Bible, a judge ordered him to pay the writer E. Jean Carroll $83 million for defamation after he denied sexually assaulting her despite being found civilly liable for having done so in a previous hearing. The payments made to Carroll were also referenced in the disclosure forms under the liabilities section.
A New York Times investigation from March estimated Trump was spending $90,000 a day on his legal defenses across a complex web of financial entities. A portion of Trump’s legal fees are covered by his Save America PAC, which was reportedly running out of money in June.
However, direct sales of the Greenwood Bible don’t go toward Trump’s reelection campaign, according to the product’s website.
While its $60 price tag is high for a Bible, the Greenwood version also includes a handwritten copy of the chorus of Greenwood’s song, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance, and the Constitution.
“The Constitution which I’m fighting for very hard,” Trump said in one of his signature asides.
Four months earlier, in a post on his social media company Truth Social, Trump advocated for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
