Donald Trump’s two favorite things are himself and money. Now he has decided to combine the two. Indeed, for the first time in history, the sitting president is adding his signature to our paper currency. Trump’s name will be on your money, which is his way of saying that he owns you.
This fits a larger pattern. Since he took office for the second time, Trump has been putting his name everywhere, not just on his hotels, steaks, and birthday letters to Jeffrey Epstein.
And he’s not the only one doing it. In 2024, a group of House Republicans introduced a bill to rename Washington Dulles International Airport the “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” Not that the president should want his name on airports right now, but still.
The sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, said, “As millions of domestic and international travelers fly through the airport, there is no better symbol of freedom, prosperity and strength than hearing ‘Welcome to Trump International Airport’ as they land on American soil.” At which point they will be promptly rounded up and deported.
And last November, Florida State Rep. Meg Weinberger introduced a bill to rename the Palm Beach International Airport as another “Donald J. Trump International Airport.” Sure, why not?
Florida lawmakers have also renamed a four-mile stretch of the road from Palm Beach International Airport to Mar-a-Lago “President Donald J. Trump Boulevard,” an amazing gesture that Trump called “an amazing gesture.”
It’s a game no one plays better than Trump himself. Since returning to power, Trump has been on a tear when it comes to buildings—and a teardown, technically. What used to be the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is now, albeit unofficially, the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. What was once the U.S. Institute of Peace has been rebranded the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. Trump reportedly floated the idea of renaming Penn Station after himself during negotiations over federal funds for a tunnel between New York and New Jersey.
We used to bestow such honors on presidents after they left office—typically after they died—as a way to remember them. But now, people are naming things after Trump to remind him of who they are. Nothing says “Hey, look at me!” to Trump as much as “Hey, look at this shrine I made for you.”
In January, a group of cryptocurrency investors installed a statue to Trump at his golf course in Doral, Florida. They spent $300,000 to create a 15-foot-tall gold statue of him. It stands atop a 7,000-pound pedestal and is roughly the same height as a two-story building. It is, like the man it commemorates, vulgar and excessive. But one thing it is not is unnecessary, at least not from the vantage point of these investors. The way to Trump’s heart is through his ego, and nothing satiates his ego as much as a graven image made in his image and at someone else’s expense.
“It LOOKS FANTASTIC,” Trump predictably said.
Free societies tend to shy away from this kind of real-time self-glorification. As a general rule, the more despotic the regime, the more grandiose the monuments it constructs. Louis XIV transformed Versailles from a hunting lodge into a sprawling palace. Saddam Hussein built opulent palaces and a 40-foot statue of himself. Trump, meanwhile, is overseeing the construction of a gargantuan and gaudy 90,000-square-foot ballroom in place of what used to be the East Wing of the White House—in addition to proposing a 250-foot-tall arch in the nation’s capital, which he hopes to be “the biggest one of all”—simply because he wants to. He is turning public monuments into self-monuments.
Usually, we memorialize presidents once public opinion and historians have had time to reach a consensus as to whether their contributions merit commemoration. Construction of the Washington Monument began in 1848, the Lincoln Memorial in 1914, and the Jefferson Memorial in 1939. The construction of Mount Rushmore started in 1927, just 18 years after Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency ended and eight years after he died. This was arguably too soon. In hindsight, it’s debatable whether the first Roosevelt belongs alongside Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. The lesson, then, is to be patient.
But there’s no point in exercising patience with Trump. The entire purpose of commemorating him with statues and airports is to bribe him, which can only be done while he is still alive and in power.
We name things after people to honor them. But the only way to know if they are worth honoring is to know what they did. That’s why, typically, we don’t erect monuments to presidents while they are still living. After all, what if we built a statue of someone who turned out to be in the Epstein files or who, after losing an election, tried to overthrow our democracy? It would be costly and tedious to dismantle a statue of such a person after these revelations surfaced. Perhaps Trump realizes this, which is why he’s building not one monument to himself but scores of them.
Expect more. You can bet your—or, rather, Trump’s—money on it.
