Meet the Man Who Wants to Create a 'Deplorables Nation'

When Hillary Clinton uttered the words “basket of deplorables” while referring to Donald Trump supporters last September, few thought it would ever turn into anything more than a few t-shirt sales and a good news headline.

But Evelio Medina, president of the Downtown Miami and Brickell Chamber of Commerce, saw something different — a huge business opportunity. He immediately seized the moment and trademarked the term, “Deplorables Nation.”

“I immediately bought the websites, too. I’m a proud deplorable and there are a lot of us out there,” Medina, founder of the Deplorables Nation, told FOXBusiness.com. “I wanted to create a movement.”

He says the idea is not to make money off of Hillary’s faux pas (which she later publicly regretted), but position the new company as a 501(c)(4) organization for Trump supporters.

“We’re having a Deplorables Inaugural Ball in D.C. tomorrow night,” he said. “Over 300-plus tickets have been sold and I can tell you that Trump knows about it.”

While Medina is unsure if President-elect Trump will show up to the event, he says that he has received calls from all across the country, “from ranchers in Montana to high-network people. I just got a call from a man from Nantucket today, where it is typically a very liberal area, and a bus full of women are coming from North Carolina," he said. "We have people coming from all over."

Over 2,000 tickets are available for the Deplorable Inaugural Ball between $500 and $1,000 a pop, which means Medina could potentially make over $1 million — not including sales of souvenirs with the Deplorable Nation trademark. But Medina says he plans to put all the money back into the non-profit, which he hopes to build out in the coming months.