President Donald Trump made an early start to the holiday weekend by flying to Florida to name a road after himself.
The president was in Washington on Friday morning to take part in “The Great, Historic Investment in Rural Health Roundtable.”
But right after the East Room discussion, he was flying to Palm Beach, Florida, for a street-naming ceremony.
On Dec. 8, Palm Beach city commissioners voted to rename a four-mile stretch of Southern Boulevard as “President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.”
Ceremonial markers will be placed along Southern Boulevard between Palm Beach International Airport and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to mark the honor.
Air Force One was expected to land in Florida in time for the 3:15 p.m. ceremony, when Trump will formally add the road outside his Florida resort to his stable of all things named Trump.
Most presidents tend to wait until after their tenure to be honored by their peers. But Trump isn’t leaving anything to chance.
He has already added his name to the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and a new class of battleships. He also has a Trump Gold Card visa that allows workers into the U.S. for $1 million apiece, Trump accounts for investments, and the upcoming TrumpRX website to offer cheaper prescription drugs.
“At no previous time in history have we consistently named things after a president who was still in office,” Jeffrey Engel, the David Gergen director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, told ABC News. “One might even extend that to say a president who is still alive. Those kind of memorializations are supposed to be just that—memorials to the passing hero,” he added.
“The Administration’s focus isn’t on smart branding, but delivering on President Trump’s goal of Making America Great Again,” a White House spokesperson told ABC.
They pointed out that the U.S. capital was named after George Washington while he was president and that Herbert Hoover was the sitting president when the Hoover Dam was named.
Trump has long used his name as branding for his own businesses, including for his hotels, Bibles, watches, and the $TRUMP memecoin.
At the White House roundtable on Friday, Trump announced a $50 billion boost to rural health care funding.
“With the Rural Health Transformation program, we are getting rural Americans the help they need,” he said.
