Trump’s Need to Put His Moniker on Everything Is Tiresome … but Harmless
I have been a constant critic of President Trump’s larger-than-life personality, and one of his traits that offends me most remains his insatiable desire to affix his name, face, and golden lettering to everything within reach. Fortunately, it is an eccentricity more than a life-and-death policy failing, yet it grows tiresome. One almost expects the man to brand the moon if only he could.
This compulsion did not begin in the White House. It carried over seamlessly from his private empire. We can understand the Trump name emblazoned across real estate projects around the globe. That practice follows a long tradition of Hilton—not Paris—and Marriott. Branding buildings is how developers sell dreams to the wealthy.
Yet Trump elevated the game. Before his first stint in the Oval Office, he peddled Trump Steaks, Trump Wine, Trump Vodka, and the Trump Foundation. Those ventures met mixed fates, with some collapsing faster than a poorly constructed casino. His personal plane’s fuselage screams “Trump” in letters larger than most airline logos.
Once Trump moved into the White House, the branding machine shifted into overdrive. Campaign merchandise expanded into a full retail empire—hats, shirts, Bibles, even sneakers. The latest offering is the Trump Watch, which the president himself hawks in television spots with the enthusiasm of a late-night infomercial host.
Political campaigns have long used retail sales to supplement donations. That tactic is hardly new. What is new is the Trump scale — a merchandising operation that would make even the most shameless carnival barker blush. Personally, I do not view it as a dignified look for the leader of the free world.
What bothers me more deeply is the relentless urge to rename, rebrand, or erect monuments in his own honor while still in office. Consider the United States Institute of Peace. Trump administration officials gutted the independent agency and then, with remarkable chutzpah, slapped the president’s name on the building itself. It is now the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace—or so the signage proudly declares. One wonders if peace negotiations will henceforth require a licensing fee.
The Kennedy Center suffered a similar fate. Without much rationale beyond raw political muscle, Trump’s allies on the board tacked his name above the Kennedys at what is now the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. The man once hosted a beauty pageant and a reality television program, but those credentials hardly align with the center’s cultural mission. Democrats will surely reverse the change the moment they regain power, proving the move was always more about ego than enduring legacy.
His name now graces highways and airports. The West Palm Beach facility, near his Mar-a-Lago estate, became President Donald J. Trump International Airport earlier this year. Most presidents receive such honors posthumously or at least long after leaving office, when history has had time to render a verdict. Trump prefers his tributes served promptly.
Then there is the proposal for a passport picture of Donald J. Trump. While I have yet to see official confirmation of his visage appearing on every U.S. passport, the very idea fits the pattern so perfectly that it feels inevitable. Passports last a decade. Imagine traveling years after his presidency and still carrying his likeness through customs—a permanent, pocket-sized reminder of the branding era. It would be downright ridiculous, turning a serious document of international identity into another piece of Trump memorabilia.
Future projects promise even greater spectacle. Plans exist for a grand new White House ballroom to address longstanding complaints about the East Room’s inadequate size for major events. The idea holds merit for both entertainment and security reasons. Yet it comes as no surprise that Trump envisions it dedicated as the Trump White House Ballroom. I prefer something less partisan and more historic—perhaps simply the Presidential Ballroom, allowing future occupants to host events without feeling the ghost of White Houses past. (I once worked in the White House, and I cannot recall any room being named after a past president except the Lincoln Bedroom – which the 16th President never slept in. But I digress.)
Most ambitious of all is the proposed Triumphal Arch to mark America’s 250th birthday. Renderings depict a towering, gold-infused structure near Arlington National Cemetery, already dubbed the Arch de Trump by cheeky critics. Trump calls it the United States Triumphal Arch, but he would have it recognized as the Trump Arch. While I support commemorating the semiquincentennial with grandeur, an arch should evoke independence and shared national triumph, not a single President. Call it the Independence Anniversary Arch. Something neutral. Something that will not prompt future presidents to erect competing monuments like rival shopping malls. Yes, we have the Washington Monument and Lincoln and Jefferson memorials, etc., but represent unique men of unique greatness and accomplishment – and were erected posthumously.
One cannot ignore the aesthetic signature that characterizes all of Trump stamped projects — oceans of gold leaf. Artists’ conceptions of the new ballroom and White House renovations drip with it. Anyone who has seen photographs of Trump’s New York penthouse understands the vision—opulent, shiny, and unmistakably gilted. The man clearly believes more more gold connotes more greatness. (I am not opposed to gold. In fact, there is a running joke among my family about my use of gold paint on restored antiques. But I am a piker compared to Trump. But I digress.)
Trump’s obsession with the glitter of gold is not fascism or symbols of tyranny– or any other ism that keeps think-tank scholars awake at night. It is a personality quirk – perhaps showmanship run amok. He is the eternal real-estate developer treating the nation’s capital like an unfinished condominium project.
Trump built a personal brand so powerful that it became a political force. That is no small achievement. Yet, when the branding spills into public institutions, airports, peace institutes, and performing arts centers, it crosses from savvy marketing into self-parody.
Future historians will debate his policies on trade, wars, borders, and the economy. They may spend less time on the gold-plated bathroom fixtures or the number of buildings bearing his name. Still, the pattern reveals something essential about the man — an unshakable belief that his personal brand and the country’s success are inextricably intertwined.
In an era of serious challenges and crisis-level issues, this habit remains mostly harmless eccentricity. Tiresome eccentricity, to be sure, but eccentricity, nonetheless. One can only hope that when the Trump era ends, the nation’s signage budget receives a well-deserved rest. America deserves monuments to its ideals, not to any one temporary tenant of the Oval Office. It is in hindsight that future generations will decide the tributes to Trump – as it has been and should be.
So, there ‘tis.
I will say Trump is one unique character, the likes we’ve never seen. This tale is pure conjecture from one observer. Trump represents what us North Easters call nouveau riche and he seems to come by it purposefully as his choice. He was born rich, went to the best private schools, universities, and dad gave him his first career position. The Kennedys have compounds; Trump lives in a hotel. It’s a choice. I mean he buys a big house and then rents rooms. He’s not just recently rich, he’s three generations rich, not nouveau riche, he just acts that way, for effect. He did well with his money, but certainly not spectacular like his dad.
His grandfather, a German barber, entrepreneur, and draft dodger (a family trait), came to America, ran restaurants, gold mines, brothels, and more. He left a fortune, but not at millionaire level for about $700K in 2020 dollars in 1918. He returned to Jamacia Avenue, Queens, NYC in 1910 after some time spent in the West’s gold rush.
Trump’s grandmother continued the real estate business started by her husband while her son, the real story, Trump’s father, grew up with a yen for real estate and buck. Trump’s father started in construction either before or after high school where he hauled lumber to sites, became a carpenter’s assistant, and took over the real estate business when he became 21 making shrewd moves thereafter and avoids going to two World Wars. He built a supermarket, sold quick for good bucks, bought a mortgage company, where he specialized in foreclosures and profited. He worked hard, rose quickly, and three years later had 400 workers building stuff. He capitalized on FHA programs and profited greatly on new homes built for veterans as he expanded to other cities. They called him the Henry Ford of real estate as he literally built a RE factory line. Along the way he marketed like charging xxx.99 for a house, shrewd? But he also motorboated off Coney Island flying shark balloons worth $250 on his properties. But Don saw marketing and thought he could do better. He focused on low income and was quoted about how WWII would be a huge profit as no Trump ever enlisted for any war, and often dodged the draft, in a few countries no less. This holds true today with Trump’s three boys and his own war of choice. After the war, he moved up to medium income housing. He leveraged Federal Programs, worked hard, and was voted for and deserved the Horatio Alger rags to riches award.
By the mid 50’s, Eisenhower called him, and other, real estate profiteers and went after them. Trump was arrested at a KKK rally; rumor has it that he said he thought it was for fried chicken, the Clux stood for chicken. Don starts his first building, with dad’s loan and dad’s pocket politicians greasing the skids to help. His first building was a success and then his developments went to shit with Dad propping him up with a $35M line of credit. Did the same in Atlantic City when Trump ran out of operation cash. On that one, dad bought like $1M in chips and then threw out the chips. Trump in his early adventures invested his own money, almost lost it all, and learned the first rule of business: never invest your own money. By the mid-seventies, dad is rolling in it, Don is building, partying in NYC, having dodged the draft (a Trump legacy). He learns his love of life, a flare for marketing that focused on the flamboyant trappings of the nouveau riche. He begins to build the Trump brand around nouveau riche.
An that’s the key: all Trump is, his brand, his image, the master showman of excess. The buildings are bigger, gaudier, festooned in gold coverings, downright tacky if not trashy. Like Disney without the rides, Vegas without the gambling. It all appeals to the masses yearning to be nouveau riche as Trump spins his rags to riches story, a lie. He is really riches to rags and back again. And again. And. And some of the rich love it as a joke, a laugh, a lark, like going to Las Vegas for a good time. He is marketing nouveau riche. He makes people think he is rags to riches, a regular guy like us, who brilliantly becomes rich and loves to show people. And folks appear to eat it up. FYI: he is born with a silver spoon; he could of done as well by just investing.
Dad left $1B of which Don got $400M in 1999; that’s almost $1M today. At 4% that’s over $1B today. At 7%: over $2B. Trump was worth less than $4B in 2016 so chances are he could have skipped the whole thing and just put it in a money market at 8.5% to get to the same place, fiscally speaking. A little risk, but pretty easy to do.
The other beauty of Trump is his ability to get loans. Deutsche Bank ends up being the only bank to loan for some unknown reason, even to upper managers at DB. Today it’s some flaky South Florida investors group, shady as to who they are and what they do. His DC Hotel was a disaster, but somehow, once again at the brink of failure, he sells it for much more than it’s worth and get these investors to pump a huge amount in all between his first and second term. It’s almost magical, except for the shady part. This is his real strength, the ability to market his brand to get huge loans and investments even in the face of abject failure. It’s a pure mystery to most. And I’m a guy that talked mahogany row to invest tens of millions in projects for new stuff of unproven returns – dreams – some of which succeeded wildly, but most did not. What he does, over and over, in defeat, is to rise again, even better. Now he grifts his crypto business and I guarantee that Don does not even know what crypto is. He’s selling his brand again. And he’s making the most money in his life.
The difference between Trump and Dad is Dad leveraged FHA programs to create his real estate factory line. He cranked them out and got rich. Trump makes it, breaks it, goes boom and bust, but built something else: a brand. He then slaps that brand on anything that moves. Not much that he builds survives but like the proverbial shark, he jumps keeps swimming and slapping that brand on any opportunity he bumps into. Over his dad, Trump added brazen marketing using himself as his brand image. He reveled in nouveau riche making us normies think if this schmuck can do it, we can to, and marveling at his gold tin foiled toilets and other tasteless gaudy crap. Yeah, we already gots tasteless, all we need is bucks. And the rich laughed at him, enjoyed his playgrounds, like going to Disney for a good time, some good laughs. Trump’s nouveau riche is just part of his act, his brand, his logo. He knows better, but he knows what sells. He could care less about the Kennedy Center, the Arch, the ballroom; what he cares about is what these things will make him, in bucks, as part of his brand.
You have to admire that he did find a way to outsmart his dad without outworking him. He failed monetarily against Dad until the grifts of his second term. Clever is as clever does. As soon as we say goodbye to Donald, we will take back the brand off all the buildings and monuments and all it will be remembered as yet another wasted cost to the taxpayers: Trump’s real legacy, debt from other people’s money.