- President Donald Trump has suggested that his autograph could sell for as much as $10,000 during a visit to hurricane-hit Louisiana.
- The president was at Lake Charles fire station for a briefing on
Hurricane Laura 's impact, which has killed 14 people and left vast numbers of people without electricity. - Signing pieces of paper for autograph seekers, he said: "Here, sell this tonight on eBay, you'll get 10,000."
- On Friday, Trump approved a declaration that made FEMA funding available for Louisiana.
President Donald Trump said that his autograph could sell for $10,000 on eBay in remarks made during a visit to Louisiana to survey hurricane damage.
In footage circulated on social media, the president signed autographs for officials at a Lake Charles fire station, where he was briefed about conditions in the city following Hurricane Laura.
"Here, sell this tonight on eBay, you'll get 10,000," he said, handing an autograph to a police officer. He elaborated on his signatures' value, telling another autograph-seeker: "If I put your name down, it loses a lot of value. So just sell it tonight on eBay," to laughter from some onlookers.
Trump was visiting both Louisiana and Texas to view the damage from the hurricane, which killed 14 people and left hundreds of thousands without power as of Saturday.
On Friday, the president approved a major disaster declaration for Louisiana, enabling the state to access FEMA relief funding.
"Our hearts go out to families who lost loved ones," he said on Saturday, according to Lafayette newspaper The Daily Advertiser.
The footage of him signing autographs was circulated by conservative anti-Trump campaign The Lincoln Project with the comment: "Unbelievable."
—The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 29, 2020
Trump has previously bragged about the value of his signature, telling eBay's interim CEO in January that even "senators and congressmen" put his autograph up for sale.
Numerous items purportedly signed by the president end up on sale on eBay, though few sell for much more than $1,000 at the time of writing.