By Asawin Suebsaeng & Andrew Perez
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
Donald Trump – who within mere months of his second term shoveled more than $1 billion of taxpayer money into initiatives specifically designed to inflate his personality cult and make him feel better about himself – lives in palpable fear of what several of his administration officials are calling the possible coming flood of “de-Trumpification.” The “de-Trumpification” that keeps the U.S. president up at night isn’t the kind geared toward reversing the democratic backsliding that he and his Republican Party have unleashed.
No, the “de-Trumpification” that the former reality-TV star is obsessed with is the kind that would involve bulldozing his pet structural projects, removing his likeness from money, and erasing the words “Donald J. Trump” from some big, beautiful buildings once he’s out of power, according to sources close to the president.
Two Trump advisers and three U.S. government officials tell Zeteo that Trump devotes an inordinate amount of his time not just to decorating, making plays for his Washington, DC, arch and White House ballroom and other expensive tributes to himself, and getting his face, name, and personal touch plastered on as many buildings, pieces of currency, and monuments as he can possibly get away with; the American ruler also spends what one administration official describes as “a ton” of time worrying about – and using considerable government resources to preempt – future efforts by Democrats to tear down his presidential legacy of architecture and idolatry.
These endeavors aren’t as costly, in terms of treasure or human lives, as some of Trump’s other scandals and atrocities, including his illegal war on Iran or his mass ethnic-cleansing operations. And yet, the scale at which one raving egotist has marshaled a staggering sum of our public dollars and man hours toward turning his image into America’s MAGA Kim Il-Sung is genuinely shocking, deeply corrupt, and absurdly lawless. And the Trump administration’s determination to preserve this for the ages, in the face of heavy popular resistance, points to how desperate this president is to entrench his authoritarian cultism into the infrastructure and distant future of the republic.
Sources say that President Trump has demanded administration officials explore – or simply concoct – novel legal theories and strategies that he hopes will make it harder for people to demolish Trump-branded public properties, or rip off his name or likeness.
Some of these Trump officials, two of the sources tell Zeteo, have studied examples of efforts to purge specific autocratic political cultures in other countries – such as “de-Ba’athification” in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and the “de-Orbánising” taking place in Hungary following the electoral defeat of Trump’s political ally Viktor Orbán.
The idea behind those informal studies within the Trump-Vance administration is, of course, so that Trump aides and advisers can learn how to better attempt to forestall “de-Trumpification” here in the U.S. – or to at least make it more annoying and difficult for the opposition party to do it, if the Democrats regain power and decide to embark on the path of brushing Trump’s cult of personality into the ash heap of history.
It the Democratic Party does attempt to purge Trump’s name and design work, it’ll be a tall order – given how much public money and effort that the president, his allies, and the federal government are funneling into their mission to allow Trump to prop up the fantasy that he is a beloved god-like figure across the United States.
However high a priority you think these projects, and the efforts to preserve them for the coming decades and administrations, are for Trump and his government, you are likely underestimating how much time and energy this president spends on this stuff.
For instance, one senior administration official recalls multiple Iran, NATO, and Cuba-related discussions with Trump that were each interrupted because the president couldn’t stop diverting the conversation to topics like the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the Kennedy Center, his proposed triumphal arch in DC, the White House ballroom he’s building, or even getting a New York train station renamed after himself.
The president is, after all, “consumed by it,” says one Trump adviser, who has spoken to the president about this topic multiple times.
“He has told me and others, more than a few times, that the reversal of this work cannot happen,” this adviser continues. “The president wants all of it to be there forever. We’re talking about the Kennedy Center, the ballroom, all of it and more. President Trump is looking at his legacy in centuries and this is a huge part.”
Such is his panic at the prospect of “de-Trumpification” that the president has proposed some truly boneheaded methods for combating attempts to cement and institutionalize his hero-worship.
Sources with knowledge of the matter say that as the Trump administration fought in court to get the president’s name back on the facade of the Kennedy Center in DC, Trump insisted that next time, his name be fastened to the side of the building with “stronger” material that makes it exceedingly difficult to pry it off a wall. Separately, a Trump adviser and another person briefed on the matter say, as recently as last month, the president has told aides that it’s important that people keep fighting to get his name back on the Kennedy Center, the living monument to the slain Democratic president, John F. Kennedy.
Trump’s appointees have repeatedly warned, including in federal court, that they may have to demolish the Kennedy Center if Trump is not allowed to add his name back to the building. They argue his name is necessary for it to be financially viable – a ludicrous claim given that the institution saw its pledges and program revenue fall through the floor, and suddenly had to write off $48 million in bad debt, after his takeover began, according to tax documents obtained by Zeteo. And yet, Trump’s Justice Department is still fighting in court to please him, and to try to force the judiciary to allow him to put himself back on a building meant to honor a dead, much more popular president.
And boy, is the president afraid that he will live to see a Democratic successor tear down his precious White House ballroom, which he is trying to build, in the face of ongoing court challenges, after he lawlessly bulldozed the East Wing last year. In his efforts to erect his so-called “President Donald J. Trump Ballroom” and his “Arc de Trump,” his administration has repeatedly invoked supposed national-security concerns, in a move that several of Trump’s government lawyers across different departments actively explored following the president’s demands for legal justifications (or, pretexts, as many would say) for jamming these projects through.
One Republican lawmaker tells Zeteo that Trump personally called them and at least one other legislator on Capitol Hill and asked if it’s possible to pass laws to make the ballroom “permanent.” This lawmaker adds that Trump has also privately inquired about ways to make it, in the president’s phrasing, “illegal” to take U.S. coins with his face on them out of circulation. (Trump has also added his signature to $100 bills.)
However petty or rooted in self-worship, Trump’s fears of physical “de-Trumpification” are perfectly rational – if only because several elected Democrats have already floated doing it once he’s out of office.
“I don’t think it would be a bad idea to tear it down,” retiring Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) told NBC, commenting on if the planned White House ballroom is built by the time a Democratic president takes over. “It’s this gigantic blob there that’s Donald Trump.”
Still, one could argue Trump has less to worry about than he thinks. It is not a consensus at all among elite Dems that they should go for full-scale “de-Trumpification,” if they win back Congress this year and the White House in 2028. For one, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has said that if the ballroom gets built, it ought to be used in a manner that “celebrates and empowers forgotten Americans.”
In response to a request for comment on Monday, Trump White House spokesman Davis Ingle emailed Zeteo the following statement: “Dumocrats are opposed to anything that celebrates the greatness of our Country because they are America Last losers. Thanks to the Builder-in-Chief, no other president has done more to beautify our Nation’s interior than President Trump. From restoring our treasured landmarks, which had suffered years of abuse and vandalism, to cleaning our parks and the Reflecting Pool, President Trump’s bold vision is ensuring the People’s House and our Nation’s Capital will be properly glorified and remain in excellent condition for generations to come.”
As this brief statement shows, the cultism is coming from inside the (People’s) house. How long the cultist idolatry remains on the streets and buildings of Washington is another matter.
