President-elect Donald Trump recently took time out from planning a new administration to hawk Trump-branded watches and his new line of perfume and colognes, the latter modestly priced at $199 each. Although best known as a real estate magnate, Trump is no stranger to product promotion. His newest offerings join a long list of Trump-branded merch that includes sneakers, Bibles, NFT cards, digital playing cards, electric guitars, steaks, ties and wine.

What are we to make of a recently reelected president of the United States and a billionaire six times over who uses the publicity of his election to promote merchandise? I know what his critics would say. That it is unseemly. That the prestige of the office is sullied by his grasp for profits. That Trump doesn’t need the money. That public duty should take precedence over private interest.

Such critics are wrong. They are living in the cultural dark ages that prized long-dead values, such as integrity and placing public service before private interest. Attached to outmoded values, they can’t see that far from breaking norms, Trump’s latest venture in product promotion perfectly expresses our dominant cultural norm: self-promotion. Trump astutely recognized early in his career that we are all marketers now, both in our professional and personal lives. He foresaw the merging of the personal and commercial exemplified in the employment advice we now dispense to young people. We no longer say, “Cultivate skills.” We say, “Be a brand.” This admonition of questionable grammatical construction is echoed from the heights of academia. “For better or worse,” writes Jill Avery and Rahel Greenwald in the Harvard Business Review, “in today’s world everyone is a brand, and you need to develop yours and get comfortable marketing it.” The prevalence of this cultural norm explains the rise of social media influencers, who seek to monetize every aspect of their existence, no matter how intimate or mundane. Get-ready-with-me videos, anyone?

Critics of Trump, now and in his first term, naively contend that public and private pursuits should be separate. They complained that in his initial go-round as president, Trump refused to place his businesses in a blind trust, as former presidents did. They predict that under a new Trump presidency, the commander-in-chief role would morph into self-promoter in chief.

But even if that turns out to be true, Trump would be no different than other public officials, who use their offices to promote side hustles. Members of Congress typically leave office far wealthier than when they entered, supplementing their pay by writing books, delivering paid speeches and the occasional profit from insider stock trading. Once they leave office, many become lobbyists and profit from their insider knowledge of lawmaking and access to lawmakers. Writing books and giving paid speeches has become a cottage industry in the Supreme Court. Bound by no enforceable ethical rules, justices write memoirs early in their careers rather than at the end as previous justices did. They supplement their more-than-adequate $274,000-per-year salary by speechifying, teaching and let us not forget receiving generous gifts from billionaires.

Trump is popular, not because of the public’s concern with the state of the economy, immigration or loss-of-status grievances, the typical reasons trotted out by political pundits and pollsters. Rather he is popular because the public senses, in a way they perhaps can’t articulate, that he embodies the self-promotion spirit of our times. Trump is literally a brand. Trump-branded products are not typically produced by Trump companies. His name is more important than the nondescript products themselves. A red hat is just a red hat until MAGA stitching makes it valuable. Those who find Trump’s mixing of politics and marketing objectionable are swimming against the cultural zeitgeist. They should heed the counsel of self-help gurus and embrace change. Or better yet. They should follow Trump’s example and be a brand.

Eric Heavner (eheavner@towson.edu) teaches political science at Towson University.