‘This has gotta be a shirt’: Images of a bloodied Trump blanket Milwaukee

Milwaukee, Wisconsin CNN —

Andrea Neuser was laid up with a migraine Saturday when she heard that there had been an attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life.

She called her husband and business partner, Brad, into their bedroom to watch the news coverage. Soon, they were in tears. Then they went to work.

“My eyes were watering, and I was just trying to process all these emotions,” Neuser said. “And then I would say within processing all those emotions, it was like … this has gotta be a shirt.”

Days after Trump survived an assassin’s high-caliber bullet, photographs from the immediate aftermath of the shooting – as Secret Service agents rushed him offstage during a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania – are unavoidable on the streets of Milwaukee outside the Republican National Convention. His bloodied face and raised fist are plastered on T-shirts, hats, pins, as well as framed art, all for sale to the faithful.

Speaking off to the side of the merchandise stand she runs with Brad and their two sons outside the security barricades surrounding the Republican National Convention site, Neuser said she was not trying “to capitalize on something so horrific,” but that the opportunity was too lucrative to pass up. The image on the shirts – the word“FEARLESS” is spelled out above the historic photograph of Trump – started on a laptop screen before moving to a printer and then an oven, where it was heat-pressed in the Neusers’ basement onto black and white Gildan tees.

By Monday afternoon, the family was posted up near a major checkpoint into the RNC grounds, where the “FEARLESS” shirts sold fast.

Christina Holbrook, who came to the RNC from her home in Cincinnati, purchased a similar shirt from another,