Why every vestige of Trump must be torn down
He's trying to create a physical legacy. The moment he's out of power, it has to be smashed to bits.
🎆 🍾 🎊 PN NEW YEAR’S SPECIAL 🎊 🍾 🎆 Click the button below to sign up for an annual paid subscription for the special price of $40 ⬇️
Donald Trump has always loved slapping his name on things. It reflects a desperate desire for acknowledgement, a yearning to be seen and known by others, a cry of “I exist, and I am important!” shouted to the universe.
Now, with the power of the federal government in his hands, he’s doing more of it than ever — much more than in his first term.
It goes beyond an exercise in branding. Trump is seeking a physical legacy, a collection of signs and structures that will pay eternal tribute to his greatness. Which is why it is so important — and why it will be so rewarding — for the next Democratic president to tear it all down and smash it to bits.
This isn’t just about petty revenge, even if there is undoubtedly some of that going on here. Emerging from this dark period in our history will require a sweeping, comprehensive strategy of repudiation and repair, one that encompasses the substantive, the procedural, and the symbolic. Fortunately, removing the physical remnants of Trumpism will be much simpler than reconstituting the federal workforce or rebuilding our security alliances.
The totems of Trumpism are multiplying
In just the last few months, Trump has embarked on a frenzy of construction and renaming that is proceeding so quickly it can be hard to keep track of. It’s almost as if he suddenly realized — after doing almost none of this in his first term — that amidst all the other laws, rules, and norms he so enjoys breaking, there was one he had overlooked: We don’t name things after sitting presidents, often not even after living ones.
In the past, a president had to merely hope that if he achieved greatness, the nation would one day express its thanks to him by erecting statues and putting his name on elementary schools. To hell with that, Trump said.
So the US Mint is going to create a commemorative $1 coin with his face on both sides. The US Institute of Peace has been renamed the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. The Kennedy Center has been (illegally) renamed The Trump Kennedy Center.
Trump tore down the East Wing of the White House so it could be replaced with a monument to his sleaze, a ballroom he’ll probably end up naming after himself (though for now he claims “I don’t have any plan to call it after myself”).
He wants to build a gigantic triumphal arch. He recently announced plans for a “Golden Fleet” of new battleships, named the Trump Class, and explained that he’d be working on the design because “I’m a very aesthetic person.”
And that’s after Trump Rx (a web site for comparing drug prices), Trump Accounts (a version of baby bonds), and the Trump Gold Card, a way for rich foreign jagoffs to buy their way into permanent US residency.
Some of these are programs and websites, but the ones that are most important to the president — the ballroom, the ships, the signage on buildings, the arch — are the ones that have physical form.
What’s going on here? Narcissism, insecurity, self-aggrandizement, the mania of the cult leader — sure. But there’s something else at work.
Trump is haunted by mortality.
How to live forever
Trump has been thinking about his own death lately, which is not too surprising for a 79-year-old man in questionable health.
The subject creeps in from time to time when he’s in a contemplative mood, talking about a subject that would seem to have nothing to do with his inevitable descent into the void.
“I wanna try and get to heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well,” he told Fox News in August when discussing his attempts to end the war in Ukraine, uncharacteristically dropping his boastfulness just for a moment. “I am really at the bottom of the totem pole. But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”
Then in October, Fox’s Steve Doocy asked him about it, and Trump replied, “I don’t think there’s anything gonna get me into heaven.”
Maybe not. But here on Earth, Trump very much wants to live forever. And unlike the Silicon Valley tech oligarchs pouring money into longevity research in the hopes that the secret of eternal life can be found (naturally, they’ll be first in line for the treatment), Trump is taking a somewhat more traditional path to immortality.
The fear of death has been a human obsession since we emerged from the caves and got smart enough to consider our place in an unfeeling universe. It’s why every religion promises some form of immortality, and why men of power seem inevitably to search for eternal life. If you can’t live forever in your body, and you may or may not have a soul that will endure, you can at least achieve immortality through fame. This is an ancient conception of heroism: Commit great deeds on the battlefield, and people will repeat your name forever, making you immortal. Or as Irene Cara said, “Fame! I’m gonna live forever!”
A note from Aaron: Working with brilliant contributors like Paul takes resources. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber, please sign up to support our work 👇
Trump will not disappear from people’s memories for many centuries, of that we can be sure. But he wants something more: physical manifestations of himself for people to gaze upon as they speak his name. His increasingly decrepit body may wither away, but the ballroom and the arch and the battleships will remain.
But here’s the good news: They don’t have to. Some of it will never happen (don’t hold your breath waiting for the Golden Fleet), and what does can be renamed, reconfigured, or just torn down the moment he is out of power. Best of all, unless he drops dead in the next few years, Trump will be around to watch the legacy he dreamed of reduced to dust.
The destruction must begin without delay
In the first hours and days of the next president’s term, there must be a concerted effort to utterly expunge the name “Donald Trump” from every federal building, outpost, sign, website, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse, and doghouse, except where necessary for historical accuracy.
And not just the name, but every vulgar trace of him: Chisel off the letters, take down the photos, melt down the stupid coins, tear out his patio and replant the Rose Garden, strip all the chintzy gold appliques from the walls of the Oval Office. Maybe even demolish the ballroom, but at the very least remodel it so it doesn’t look so much like an obscene mashup of the Winter Palace and Saddam Hussein’s bathroom, then rename it for someone he hates. The Obama Ballroom has a nice ring to it.
This is vital: Do it all in a way that is public, planned, and staged in order to create imagery that will live on.
The symbolism matters; every American should see video and photographs of Trump’s legacy being wiped clean as a vivid embodiment of a new beginning for the government and the nation. The images of Trump’s erasure should live on for years, reproduced and memeified, until they become as familiar as Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon or the sailor kissing the nurse on V-J Day in Times Square. In the end, the visual memory of Trumpism should have two parts: His repulsive desecration of our nation’s capital, leading to the restorative and redemptive eradication of every trace of him.
When it happens, Republicans will object (and you can only imagine the meltdown Trump himself will have on Truth Social). The answer Democrats give to them should be simple: Too bad. We have the power now. A strong message must be sent to the country and future generations that Trump will not be honored or celebrated.
.jpg){kind=link}
After that project is done, Trump will live out his remaining days the way he started, as a two-bit grifter on an endless quest for marks, admired only by the saddest among us. He’ll keep putting his name on crappy goods he’ll hawk to gullible suckers on TV, just as he has for decades. The truly devoted will open their wallets to buy lifetime supplies of Trump Bronzer for Men, Trump Blast Energy Drink, and Trump Adult Diapers.
But his name should not adorn anything official, anything that represents our country and its government. Trump will live forever, but only as a cautionary tale, one we tell successive generations to demonstrate that sustaining a democracy against the corrupt and the malevolent requires vigilance and determination. That cleansing purge must be thorough and complete, and to do it right, we should start planning now.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more tomorrow. If you appreciate today’s PN, please do your part to keep us free by taking advantage of our New Year’s special and signing up for a paid subscription.
Thanks for reading, and happy holidays.
Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away
Definitely we will need to make the teardown loud, broadcast everywhere, and memorialized.
Then we move on. We have rebuilding to accomplish.
Put this awful man in history where he belongs.
Never again.