Presidents usually have to wait for long years after leaving office — or die before getting airports and other landmarks named after them. Bill Clinton had to wait 11 years,
Ronald Reagan nine. For Gerald Ford it took 22 years, according to an AP report. JFK was quickest — just one month after his assassination.
But the present occupant of the White House has no time for such annoying niceties. Saved twice from assassins’ bullets by God to make America great again,
Donald Trump wants everything pronto, here and now.
Not only does POTUS 47 want airports named after him, his family company is seeking to trademark the use of Trump name on airports and dozens of related things found there, from buses shuttling passengers to umbrellas and travel bags to flight suits.
Claiming that the Trump name is the “most infringed trademark in the world,” the Trump Organization is asking for exclusive rights to use three names on airports — President Donald J. Trump International Airport, Donald J. Trump International Airport and DJT.
For now it doesn’t plan on charging a fee — at least for a proposed renaming of the Palm Beach airport near his Mar-a-Lago, Florida home, but wouldn’t say whether it would do so at other airports or the merchandise sold there.
The unprecedented move for a trade mark for the Trump name brought swift reactions with many criticising the idea and questioning the public mandate behind such a move.
“‘Why not’…he feels he can do anything he wants…while the GOP Congress and SCOTUS have completely abdicated their constitutional duties,” wrote one frustrated EJW with a No Kings meme on X.
But for once the friendly neighbourhood Supreme Court did a Trump on the Tariff King, with three conservative justices joining all three liberal justices, to rule that the president did not have the authority to impose tariffs under a 1977 emergency economic powers law.
Yet insisting he can still do as he wishes, a defiant Trump decried the ruling as “terrible” and invoked a rarely used 1970s trade law that allows a president to invoke tariffs on countries with which the U.S. has a trade deficit, to impose a new across-the-board 10% tariff.
“Those members of the Supreme Court who voted against our very acceptable and proper method of TARIFFS should be ashamed of themselves,” he posted on Truth Social naming two of his own appointees, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.
“Their decision was ridiculous, but now the adjustment process begins, and we will do everything possible to take in even more money than we were taking in before!”
“In actuality, while I am sure they did not mean to do so, the Supreme Court’s decision today made a President’s ability to both regulate Trade, and impose TARIFFS, more powerful and crystal clear, rather than less,” he claimed in his own interpretation of the ruling.
“KEEP CALM AND TARIFF ON,” posted the White House with ‘WomenForTrump’ exhorting, “Let the Tariffs begin Sir! ” with a picture of The Tariff King.
Meanwhile, to show who is the boss in Washington, a large ‘Make America Safe Again’ Trump banner went up at justice department building in a striking symbol of president’s control over the supposedly independent top US law-enforcement agency.
His picture is already splashed all over the White House, on multi-storey banners on the side of federal buildings, on annual passes to national parks on federal investment accounts, special visas and a discount drug program.
After getting his name etched on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the U.S. Institute of Peace, Trump now wants it on Washington Dulles International Airport and Penn Station in New York too.
“While Trump has spent a lifetime promoting his personal brand, slapping his name on hotels, casinos, airplanes, even steaks, neckties and bottled water, what he is doing in his second term as president comes closer to building a cult of personality the likes of which has never been seen in American history,” suggested the New York Times.
“Other presidents sought to cultivate their reputations, but none went as far as Trump has to create a mythologized, superhuman and omnipresent persona leading to idolatry,” it noted.
Trump got the Commission of Fine Arts – which he has packed with allies, including his 26-year-old executive assistant – to vote unanimously to approve the design of “what will soon be the Greatest Ballroom ever built!”
Even as a federal judge considers whether to halt the project – and outside architects and watchdogs groups say the nearly 90,000-square-foot building is too large, Commission Chair Rodney Mims Cook Jr.
described it as “a facility that is desperately needed for over 150 years, and it’s beautiful. ” Trump is sure to find a way to cross the next hurdle – approval of the National Capital Planning Commission.
And in another bid to stay in spotlight, Trump directed federal agencies to begin releasing government files related to “alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).”
Calling the matter “extremely interesting and important,” Trump ostensibly issued the release order to “help” his bête noire Barack Obama after he talked about aliens in a podcast.
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in … Area 51. There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States,” said Obama.
Obama “made a big mistake,” Trump told reporters even as his predecessor later clarified he was sharing a personal view not based on information he’d seen as president.
“He took it out of classified information … He’s not supposed to be doing that,” said Trump, but he would ‘help’ by declassifying the files.
— Maybe he will next depute his border czar there to deport the aliens to wherever they came from!
