The $250 Ego Trip: Trump's Personality Cult Goes On the Greenback

Trump fancies himself the ultimate dealmaker. In reality, Iranian leaders have played him for a fool. Left with no exit, he runs down the clock — looking for any chance to declare victory and leave the stage. But Trump is a narcissist of the extreme variety. The more face he loses, the harder he leans into his own cult of personality. He touts himself as a "Great Leader" to offset the sting of defeat. 

As a New York Times commentary observed, Trump’s imperial ego inflation keeps hitting new highs. His latest stunt: preparing to stamp his own portrait onto US dollar bills — placing himself alongside the Founding Fathers and the great President Abraham Lincoln. To get there, he is applying immense pressure on Congress to amend the law. He is also set to become the first sitting president to have his signature printed on American banknotes. The problem is his "naming addiction" has gone too far. The backlash is fierce — and a court ruling just blocked his attempt to attach his name to the marquee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, landing him a spectacular public slap.

This is an unprecedented move that tramples existing law — yet Trump is determined to push it through regardless. A cohort of sycophantic lawmakers stands ready to reintroduce a bill in Congress, seeking a bespoke exemption just for him. The principal engine behind this effort is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Bessent recently displayed a sample $250 bill bearing Trump's portrait, declaring that preparations are in full swing to coincide with the 250th anniversary of American independence — provided Congress first passes the necessary legislation.

Trump's personality cult now has a price tag: $250. His portrait. His signature. Bessent doing the dirty work.

The legal wall standing in Trump's way is old and deliberate. Congress enacted a law in 1866 stipulating that only the likeness of a deceased individual shall appear on US currency — a safeguard against any impression that America was adopting a monarchy, incompatible with democratic principles. That law has stood unchallenged ever since. 

Shortly after returning to the White House, Trump quietly made his wishes known: he wanted to become the first sitting president to appear on a banknote. Republican Representative Joe Wilson got the message and introduced a bill calling for a new $250 note bearing Trump's likeness. Wilson proposed a legislative "exemption" to "symbolically recognize the President of the United States during the Semiquincentennial anniversary." The bill was shelved. 

By October of last year, Trump revived the issue on social media. He reposted an article by a fawning politician, which gushed that the move "A $250 bill bearing Donald J. Trump’s image is not only an appropriate tribute — it is a powerful reminder that America’s best days are still ahead." It was the kind of breathless flattery that makes your skin crawl — yet it perfectly captures what Trump wants to hear.

Top government officials received the signal and started steamrolling ahead. According to The Wall Street Journal, US Treasurer Brandon Beach and his Senior Advisor  Mike Brown personally met with officials at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to "discuss" the matter — which, in practice, meant applying pressure.

The fallout was swift. Bureau of Engraving and Printing Director  Patricia Solimene was suddenly reassigned last month. Her parting message — "leaving was not my choice" — strongly suggested that the Treasury Department used its institutional weight to crush the dissenter. She paid for her resistance with her job. 

The portrait ambitions don't stop at paper notes. Trump is also pushing to mint Presidential $1 coins bearing his likeness, as well as 24-karat gold commemorative coins marking the nation's 250th anniversary. The goal is unmistakable: a legacy cast in metal, stamped into everyday life, built to last centuries.

On top of all that, Trump's signature will be printed on the banknotes — another first in American history. Bessent, proving himself a deft political operator, described putting Trump's signature on bills as "there is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S dollar bills bearing his name."

Trump's cult-of-personality drive — faces on bills, heads on coins — is just the most visible symptom of a deeper obsession. Since returning to power, the naming stunts have been relentless. The most notable examples:

1.The Kennedy Center Power Grab. The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, built in 1971 to honor the assassinated President John F. Kennedy, became Trump's latest target. Trump forcibly tried to insert his own name alongside Kennedy's. The move triggered fierce controversy. A court recently ruled that any renaming of the center must be approved by Congress — a major public rebuke for Trump.

2.The Trump Gold Card. Late last year, Trump launched his "$1 million Gold Card" — a US permanent residency offer for wealthy buyers. Applicants have been incredibly scarce.

Trump's naming obsession runs wild: Gold Card, Kennedy Center, and counting.

3.Branded Merchandise Empire. Trump is aggressively pushing merchandise emblazoned with his logo and portrait: T-shirts, framed portraits, accessories, and everyday utensils. Sales flow through mega-rallies and e-commerce channels like Amazon. You have to respect the business instinct — it serves as self-promotion while generating a lucrative, parallel revenue stream.

4.The Gold Statue Consecration. A Trump gold statue, funded by supporters and blessed by a group of pastors in a spectacle-filled "consecration" ceremony, has since become a popular pilgrimage spot for legions of devoted Trump fans.

Critics are drawing the obvious historical parallel: Trump's personality cult looks indistinguishable from the tactics of authoritarian dictators — wholly incompatible with American democracy. Political scientists see a calculated strategy underneath the spectacle. The goal is to bind conservative political forces to his personal image, transmuting loyalty into "Trump mania" to lock in his base.

The strategy is visibly backfiring. The latest polls show just 35% of the public approves of Trump's performance — a full 12-percentage-point collapse from the 47% who backed him at the start of his term. The pattern is stark: the more he inflates his own image, the faster his popularity deflates.

As New York Times put it: Trump takes America’s “imperial Presidency” to a new level. A group of scholars at the University of Virginia observed that “Trump has routinely pushed institutional and legal limits to new extremes. But history powerfully shows that what we are seeing today will not last.

Lai Ting-yiu

What Say You?

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America's press-freedom myth just took a serious hit. The Justice Department has subpoenaed four New York Times reporters over an alleged violation of federal criminal law. The FBI has opened its own investigation. Both moves target the paper's exposé on inadequate anti-missile defenses aboard the president's new plane.

Defense Secretary Hegseth unveils "mole-hunt squad," vowing to root out leakers feeding reporters.

The White House has long nursed grudges against the press. Now, in a fury, it has escalated from threats to outright intimidation, deploying subpoenas and detentions alike. As the saying goes, there is no smoke without fire. Someone inside government must be leaking, and that conviction pushed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to announce a special task force. Working hand-in-hand with the Justice Department, the task force aims to root out the "moles."

The showdown between the White House and the press is only heating up, and the real fireworks may still lie ahead.

Trump's sudden switch to the old Air Force One after NATO sparked media exposés, igniting his fury and a subpoena crackdown.

The Plane-Swap Spark

The trigger behind this clash was the so-called "plane-swap incident." After Trump wrapped up the NATO summit in Turkey, his security team abruptly switched him onto the old Air Force One for departure. He skipped the new plane gifted by Qatar entirely, and that alone raised eyebrows.

The New York Times soon reported why. The new aircraft's missile-defense systems were inadequate, the paper said, posing a security risk that forced officials to fall back on the old plane. The White House flatly denied the report, and Trump reportedly flew into a rage. The Justice Department wasted no time, issuing subpoenas to the paper's reporters almost immediately.

There is more to this story. FBI agents reportedly showed up at the New York Times offices before the story even went to print. They demanded the paper pull the piece and reveal its sources.

The paper's leadership flatly refused. In response, the Justice Department broke with convention. Rather than identifying the leaker first, it went straight after the reporters with subpoenas, escalating pressure on the press.

This is not the first time the White House has tried to put reporters in the hot seat. Back in April, a US Air Force F-15E was shot down over Iranian airspace and the pilot went missing after ejecting. Both the New York Times and Axios covered the story.

Iran's military happened to launch a massive search operation around the same time. Whether the two events were connected remains unclear. Still, Trump was quick to blame the media, threatening to jail both the reporters and the leaker.

The White House apparently could not find hard evidence, so it ultimately took no action. That failure only deepened its resentment toward the press, and officials waited for the right moment to strike back hard. This time, the plane-swap incident gave the administration its pretext to wield the legal hammer, and it is determined to teach reporters a lesson they will not forget.

The Pentagon's "Mole Hunt"

The crackdown on "moles" by the Defense Department and the Justice Department has also ramped up. Hegseth posted a video on X yesterday announcing that the Pentagon has teamed up with the Justice Department to form a special task force. Its mission: hunt down whoever has been feeding information to the media, and anyone caught with solid evidence will face the full force of the law.

He said the Pentagon's Office of General Counsel can now require any department unit to hand over information and records tied to leak investigations within 48 hours. Full cooperation is mandatory, with no room for delay or evasion. He also issued a stern warning, declaring that "access to confidential and secret information is a sacred trust, and those who betray that trust will be met with the full force of the law".

Both Hegseth and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche are die-hard Trump loyalists. That alone signals this crackdown comes directly from Trump himself, and it is designed to make heads roll, with some officials facing criminal charges. Even without hard evidence, suspects are still likely to be pushed out of their jobs.

The Pentagon has done this before. Last year it investigated several leak cases, resulting in a number of officials being suspended, including Deputy Chief of Staff Darin Selnick and Senior Adviser Dan Caldwell. Both have since quietly disappeared from their posts.

A Hunt That Cannot Succeed

Some analysts point out a hard truth. Hegseth may be on the warpath, but the Pentagon's "mole problem" could prove impossible to fully stamp out. Since Trump's return and Hegseth's takeover of the Defense Department, internal personnel purges have stirred up widespread resentment, making it easy for reporters to find disgruntled insiders willing to talk. With so many potential leakers around, there is no way to seal every crack.

Hegseth himself is not exactly clean either. Shortly after taking office, he got caught up in the "Signalgate" scandal, leaking secret plans for a US strike on Houthi forces in a group chat. That controversy caused quite the uproar. Having broken the rules himself, how can he expect his subordinates to keep their mouths shut without complaint?

Perhaps the funniest comment came from a netizen who suggested the task force should start by investigating the bartender at Hegseth's favorite watering hole. Given his well-known fondness for drink, the odds of him spilling military secrets over a few rounds are hardly low. In the end, they might just discover that the real "leaker" was Hegseth all along.