It is no surprise at all that the world’s most powerful narcissist would want to see his face on a dollar coin and the $100 bill, his name on an NFL stadium and an international airport, his head on Mount Rushmore and his golden doodads and filigree all over the formerly tasteful and revered White House.
There is no limit to the self-celebration, self-regard and self-aggrandizing when it comes to President Donald J. Trump. What is truly sick is how the once-great Republican Party has been turned into a cult that treats its president as a demigod who deserves all the honors he desires.
Trump is agitating to have the new NFL stadium in Washington, D.C., named after himself. There is also a push to rename Dulles International Airport after the sitting president. The Treasury Department already has the dollar coin in the works with Trump on both sides of the design. The idea for a Trump $100 bill is alive in the Republican Congress.
Perhaps the most insane proposal has been put forward by Florida GOP Congressman Anna Paulina Luna, who has introduced HR 792, a bill that, if enacted, would direct the Secretary of the Interior to have Trump’s visage carved alongside the monumental, sculptured faces of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington on Mount Rushmore.
Washington, as the nation’s first president, resisted any glorification that would give a royal patina to his presidency. He set an example that lasted for nearly 250 years until Trump arrived with his impulse to put his name on everything. The relatively few monuments we have to presidents were all erected long after those presidents had died and historians had been able to assess their greatness, but Trump does not even want to wait until he is out of office for his apotheosis.
Maybe that is because he knows deep down in his craven soul that historians are certain to place him in the history books as the most unworthy, corrupt and dangerous man ever to become president of the United States.
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