Trump Is Putting His Face on Everything

We Americans remember our presidents in all sorts of ways, with monuments and statues, on coins and street signs. Another thing we do is wait—we wait until a president is safely out of office, or dead, before we bestow such honors.

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Donald Trump has bent many democratic traditions, but this one, he’s discarded altogether. Trump has been putting his name on buildings since before most Americans were born. He built his political career atop his personal brand, and much of his second term has been defined by an obsession with leaving his mark. The result is something entirely new in the nation’s history. The more you look, the more you see Trump’s face, name, or signature all around you—on a government building, infrastructure project, banknote, taxpayer-funded website, or official document.

COMPLETED

Trump’s face has appeared swiftly, often with little warning—and nowhere more so than in the nation’s capital. To find a comparable leader so fixated on the proliferation of his image, the historians I spoke with reached across oceans and time: The face of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria for nearly three decades, was printed on children’s schoolbook covers; Mussolini covered Rome’s Palazzo Braschi with a display featuring his head. Obviously Mao Zedong comes to mind. This creation of a cult of personality is partly how strongmen have sought to erase memories of their predecessors and “insert themselves into the social fabric,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian of authoritarianism at NYU, told me. There may not be a perfect comparison, but past regimes offer clues, the scholars said, about how a leader’s ubiquity can help inure citizens to broader shifts in their relationship to their government.

Kevin Carter / GettyTrump’s face—staring back at federal workers, residents, and tourists from banners draped on agencies such as the Labor Department—sends a message that “he is inseparable from these more impersonal institutions of governance,” says Lisa Wedeen, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

Kevin Carter / GettyA banner featuring the president’s face appeared on the Agriculture Department (right) last year, but was taken down soon after. Banners similar to it remain on the Labor, Justice (left), and Interior (center) Departments, despite objections by Democrats over the cost and the message they send—especially at the Justice Department, which, particularly since Watergate, has tried to operate autonomously from the president, for all sorts of obvious reasons.

Anna Moneymaker / GettyThe U.S. Institute of Peace, a government-funded think tank, had Donald J. Trump added to its name in December, even as a battle over the administration’s efforts to take control of the institute continues to play out in court. 

Kevin Dietsch / GettyThe John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts likewise has become the target of a Trump takeover. The center, initially named the National Cultural Center, was renamed for Kennedy through an act of Congress two months after his assassination. 

Kevin Carter / GettyLess than six months after loyalists Trump installed on the center’s board put his name on the center’s facade, the lettering came down following a judge’s order. But two months later, a tarp continues to cover the spot where the president’s name once was—and the board now wants to inscribe this on the facade: Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump.

Andrew Leyden / GettyIn a rush to “beautify” Washington, D.C., the president has turned stretches of the city into a construction zone—in part by redirecting money once used for national-park repairs. The most notable among these beautification efforts involves the Reflecting Pool and launched a thousand headlines this summer, as fresh sealant flaked off and algae bloomed.

Saul Loeb / AFP / GettyAlthough every president brings his own interior-decorating sense to the People’s House, Trump has dramatically altered the building’s appearance. At least three paintings and one statue at the White House illustrate the moments following the July 2024 attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania.Doug Mills / The New York Times / ReduxDoug Mills / The New York Times / ReduxChip Somodevilla / GettyDemetrius Freeman / The Washington Post / GettyDoug Mills / The New York Times / ReduxDoug Mills / The New York Times / ReduxAndrew Harnik / GettyDoug Mills / The New York Times / ReduxDoug Mills / The New York Times / ReduxTrump has filled the White House with portraits of himself. One painting is positioned between official portraits of former First Ladies Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. Another, which is hanging in the West Wing, depicts him, Henry Clay, and Abraham Lincoln with the label The Tariff Men. Yet another shows Trump with Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.Celal Gunes / Anadolu / GettyLate last year, the White House unveiled a “Presidential Walk of Fame” in the colonnade connecting the West Wing to the White House residence. Gold plaques and framed images of past presidents, including an autopen in place of President Biden, are examples of the administration’s attempts to rewrite history—in Trump’s signature color, no less.

Travel.state.gov / U.S. Department of StateAs part of the celebration of America’s 250th birthday this year, the administration released what it calls the “Patriot Passport”—a special commemorative document featuring Trump’s face. The State Department began issuing the passports in July to those applying in person at the Washington, D.C., passport agency.National Park ServiceThis year’s $80 annual resident National Parks pass looks quite different from those issued in years past (think: misty redwoods, a camouflaging frog, a snowy mountainside). Now it features Trump’s face beside George Washington’s. An environmental group sued, arguing that the Interior Department had violated a law requiring the passes to display the winner of an annual public-lands photo contest.

trumpcard.govTrump has made mass deportation a pillar of his domestic agenda, but the Trump Gold Card offers a special residency permit to foreigners willing to make a $1 million “contribution” to the United States. (Only one person is said to have received the card thus far.) A government website claims that a Trump Platinum Card is coming soon—offering up tax-related benefits in exchange for $5 million. Officials have said the funds collected through the visas will be directed to the Treasury Department. 

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / GettyTrump’s name made its way into the “.gov” URL for the site advertising the administration’s child-savings-account program—as well as to the top of the official IRS form that applicants must fill out.

trumprx.gov; trumpira.gov; trumpaccounts.govTwo other government websites similarly bear Trump’s name: TrumpRx deals with prescription-drug costs and launched in February; TrumpIRA advertises a federal platform for retirement savings, and is set to roll out in 2027.

nps.govTrump celebrated his 80th birthday on June 14 with a UFC fight on the White House’s South Lawn. Other Americans could celebrate the occasion at national parks: The Interior Department deemed it a “resident-only patriotic fee-free” day.

@realDonaldTrump / Truth SocialThis spring, the Treasury Department announced that Trump’s signature would appear on future bills—a first for a sitting president. U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach, the official who oversees the production of coins and paper money, called the move “not only appropriate, but also well deserved.”

Saul Loeb / AFP / GettyA major promise of Trump’s first presidential campaign, the border wall—which remains under construction—includes plaques featuring his signature.Chandan Khanna / AFP / GettyGeorge Walker IV / APAndrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / GettyAmy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun-Sentinel / TNS / GettyElsewhere around the country, local officials have pushed for naming streets and highways after the president. Although the majority of those measures have so far gone nowhere, a few came to fruition. A Trump bridge was unveiled in Tennessee last month, and Palm Beach International Airport was renamed for the president. Trump’s sons were passengers on the first flight to land at the freshly renamed airport.

Helen H. Richardson / MediaNews Group / The Denver Post / GettyLast March, Trump deemed a portrait of himself that had been hanging in the Colorado state capitol since 2019 “purposefully distorted.” Lawmakers voted to “immediately” remove the unflattering picture.Thomas Peipert / APA few months later, the president celebrated the portrait that took its place. The artist, Vanessa Horabuena, says she drove 33 hours in two days that summer to hand-deliver another one of her paintings to the White House.

IN THE WORKS

The Kennedy Center debacle offered the president a reminder: “Letters can easily be taken off of the surface of buildings,” Lawrence Vale, an MIT urban-planning professor who studies capital-city design and national identity, told me. Come 2029, if a Democrat wins back the White House, it’s difficult to imagine the Trump-faced banners and paintings remaining up for long. Other things—multimillion-dollar monuments, travel documents, money in circulation—would be far more challenging to undo.

CFA (Commission of Fine Arts)It’s not in the official name, but everyone can plainly see—it’s the Arc de Trump.

Jim Bourg / ReduxAndrew Harnik / GettyInspired by Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe, the prospective arch has faced backlash from locals worried that the 250-foot-tall monument would ruin the city’s skyline and tarnish the sacred stretch that connects the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery. The arch is still in the planning stage, but the president has shared various models with donors. 

Salwan Georges / The Washington Post / GettyTrump has dismissed the idea of the “President Donald J. Trump Ballroom” as “fake news.” But a list of the project’s donors referred to it as such, and top White House officials have reportedly used the name too.

McCreary Architects PLLC 2025 / whitehouse.govRegardless of its formal title, a completed ballroom where the East Wing stood a short while ago would represent the fruition of one of the president’s biggest passion projects—and, invariably, remain associated with his name.

AP Graphic / Treasury DepartmentIn the history of empires, dictators spreading their likeness via gold coin is not particularly novel. In the history of the United States, a sitting president last appeared on a coin 100 years ago, when Calvin Coolidge was featured alongside George Washington on a commemorative half-dollar issued for the nation’s 150th birthday. Last month, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the U.S. Mint would soon begin producing a $1 gold-colored coin with Trump’s face on it. 

Kent Nishimura / AFP / GettyThe Donald J. Trump $250 Bill Act proposes featuring the president on a new $250 bill. The legislation is unlikely to make it out of committee, as federal law says only portraits of deceased individuals may appear on U.S. currency. (Although living people have appeared on commemorative coins like the one Bessent announced, no living person has been featured on paper money since that statute was enacted 160 years ago.) But Beach, the treasurer, reportedly asked for prototypes of the $250 note, prompting the departure of the Treasury’s printing director. She wrote to her colleagues: “The buck stopped here.” 

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / GettyThe Navy’s plans for a new fleet of 15 Trump-class battleships were announced in December. But the project is still a long way off. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the first of the warships would take at least eight years to build—and that the program could cost $275 billion.

US Air ForceThe Air Force, meanwhile, in a nod to Trump—the 47th president—awarded a contract to Boeing in March to develop “the world’s first sixth-generation fighter aircraft,” to be called the F-47. “It’s a beautiful number,” Trump said when announcing the plans for the new jets.

ON TRUMP’S WISH LIST

Trump—and those in his orbit looking to flatter him—will almost certainly propose more places for his name and face to appear. The president could grow dissatisfied with having his name on just one airport, especially one that serves fewer than 10 million people a year. Or the new football stadium coming to Washington might grab his attention. And, of course, there is his obsession with being on Mount Rushmore. Many ideas that seemed improbable when they were first introduced have since been carried out.

@realDonaldTrump / Truth SocialThe first time Kristi Noem met Trump in the Oval Office, she was a congresswoman from South Dakota, and he told her: “Do you know it’s my dream to have my face on Mount Rushmore?” she recounted in a 2018 interview. She remembered laughing in response; the president wasn’t laughing. On a recent trip to the monument, the president and his guests were served cookies on Air Force One that featured five presidents on the mountain, with Trump sketched in to the right of Lincoln.  

Courtesy Washington CommandersLast fall, ESPN reported, Trump was telling people privately that he wants the planned new Commanders stadium in D.C. to be named after him. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wouldn’t confirm the rumor, but she did tell the outlet, “That would be a beautiful name.”

Courtesy Dulles AirportThe airports named after John F. Kennedy (in New York), Ronald Reagan (near D.C.), and George H. W. Bush (in Houston) may be serving as inspiration. (Nevermind, of course, that each of those airports was renamed after each president had died or left office.) As Dulles Airport, in Northern Virginia, prepares for a major renovation, Trump has told people that he wants the international hub renamed after him, ABC News reported; there’s a bill ready to be resuscitated that would do just that.

The tenures of previous world leaders obsessed with imparting their images onto history have yielded troves of artifacts—and left successors with the question of what to do with them all.

As Hungary’s Communist era came to an end, the government confronted one such quandary. Budapest’s new government didn’t want to melt statues down or discard them, so in 1993, it deposited dozens of them in a park 20 minutes outside the city center. In one sense, the park became an oversize storage unit for junk the Hungarian public no longer needed; in another, it was a tourist attraction in its own right—a memorial to the way that a past regime had sought to memorialize itself.

Image sources: COMPLETED: Kevin Carter / Getty; Kevin Carter / Getty; Kevin Carter / Getty; Kevin Carter / Getty; Anna Moneymaker / Getty; Kevin Dietsch / Getty; Kevin Carter / Getty; Andrew Leyden / Getty; Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty; Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux; Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux; Chip Somodevilla / Getty; Demetrius Freeman / The Washington Post / Getty; Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux; Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux; Andrew Harnik / Getty; Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux; Doug Mills / The New York Times / Redux; Celal Gunes / Anadolu / Getty; travel.state.gov / U.S. Department of State; National Park Service; trumpcard.gov; Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty; trumpaccounts.gov; trumpira.gov; trumprx.gov; nps.gov; @realDonaldTrump / Truth Social; Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty; Chandan Khanna / AFP / Getty; George Walker IV / AP; Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty; Amy Beth Bennett / South Florida Sun Sentinel / TNS / Getty; IN THE WORKS: Helen H. Richardson / MediaNews Group / The Denver Post / Getty; Thomas Peipert / AP; Commission of Fine Arts; Jim Bourg / Redux; Andrew Harnik / Getty; Salwan Georges / The Washington Post / Getty; McCreary Architects PLLC 2025; AP Graphic / Treasury Department; Kent Nishimura / AFP / Getty; Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / AFP / Getty; U.S. Air Force. ON TRUMP’S WISH LIST: @realDonaldTrump / Truth Social; Courtesy of Washington Commanders; Courtesy of Dulles Airport. 

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