Trump’s obsession with putting his name on everything is unprecedented in the United States

In December alone, Donald Trump has lent his name to a new class of warship that the United States will build in the coming years, to the U.S. Institute of Peace, and to Washington’s grand performing arts and music center, the renowned Kennedy Center. As of last week, it is officially called The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center.

Even before that, the president promised to erect a triumphal arch on the National Mall, and began demolishing the East Wing to make way for a new ballroom whose gigantic dimensions will dwarf those of the White House. When it’s finished, it will be called — you guessed it — The Donald J. Trump Ballroom.

There’s also Trump Rx, a website where the government aims to offer prescription drugs at discount prices; the Trump Accounts, an investment account for children that is paid out to the recipient upon turning 18; and the Trump Gold and Platinum Cards. These offer a shortcut for individuals and companies in a hurry to obtain U.S. residency and can afford to spend amounts starting at one million dollars, described as donations to the Department of Commerce.

The president’s obsession with plastering his name all over the place has only intensified during his first year back in the White House. And, historians agree, it’s unprecedented. Decorum dictates that White House occupants wait until they leave office before any tributes begin, and, even if it is out of false modesty, they trust (or used to) that others would do it for them.

Russell Riley, co-director of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, confirmed in an email that there is no precedent for Trump’s vanity. “These kinds of honors have always been bestowed after leaving office. Culturally, it was considered inappropriate in the United States for a president to honor himself in this way; the primary value of such tributes used to lie in the fact that his fellow citizens understood that his service deserved to be remembered forever by naming important institutions or places after him,” Riley explains. “Any presidential action can be easily reversed by the next president. So I would bet that Trump’s name won’t remain on the Kennedy Center for long after January 2029 [when the next occupant of the White House moves in].”

If Trump doesn’t resemble his predecessors in that respect either, perhaps it’s because he’s spent his entire life—a life as a real estate developer and investor—putting his name on things: towers (eight, plus three under development), hotels (four, and two more planned), casinos (seven, though all of them are now defunct), and golf courses (16, five of them abroad), as well as a winery in Virginia, a cocktail (the Trumpini, served at his club, Mar-a-Lago), and a social media platform where its creator plays with the nerves of the entire world through surprising announcements and insults. There’s even a Wikipedia page called “List of things named after Donald Trump.”

Gulf of Mexico

His inaugural fury hasn’t been limited to himself. On his inauguration day, Trump announced that the Gulf of Mexico would be renamed the “Gulf of America” by decree, and that the highest mountain in the United States would no longer be Denali, the official designation since Barack Obama’s administration, which revived the traditional name of the Athabaskan tribes of Alaska, but would revert to being Mount McKinley, in honor of the twenty-fifth president of the United States. William McKinley, who went down in history for his expansionist ambitions and for being assassinated, is also one of the figures in whom Trump enjoys seeing himself reflected.

Trump has also decided to reinstate the Department of Defense’s pre-World War II name. It’s not legal to change it just like that, but the President of the United States doesn’t care, nor does the head of the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth, a National Guard veteran and former Fox News host, seems delighted with his new business cards that read: Secretary of War.

It’s also unclear whether Trump has the authority to change the name of the Kennedy Center. Congress approved its name in 1964 in honor of the president who had been assassinated a year earlier, so any new name would have to be decided by Congress. That didn’t stop workers last Friday from adding the name of the current White House occupant to Kennedy’s name in block letters on the building’s façade.

Less than 24 hours had passed since the board of trustees, made up entirely of members handpicked by the president—a list of loyalists with no experience in cultural management, including names like his Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles; the Second Lady, Usha Vance; or the Attorney General, Pam Bondi—voted unanimously to rename the institution, even though its statutes do not state that they have that power.

Trump, who had been flirting with the idea for months, said he was “surprised” and “honored.” Even more surprising was seeing that the four workers who climbed the scaffolding the next morning were carrying letters that clearly had to have been ordered days or even weeks earlier.

It’s unclear what Trump hopes to achieve by leaving his mark everywhere. In the first year of his return to power, he has shown a greater tendency than in his first term to act impulsively. It seems beyond a doubt that an element of vanity is at play, as well as a desire to provoke outrage in his adversaries and the traditional Washington political class—a sentiment that is often proportional to the jubilation of his MAGA supporters.

“He’s someone who thrives on public adulation and is socially and politically transgressive,” says the historian Riley. “His base sees these gestures as a welcome challenge to the Washington elite. And the backlash from those political elites only confirms it. The president knows this, so these decisions are good both for his ego and for feeding his supporters.”

He might also act based on the following calculation: given that he knows the unpleasantness that awaits those who leave the White House (he did so reluctantly in 2021, after encouraging an insurrection), perhaps he doesn’t trust that those who come after him will honor his memory as he believes he deserves, so it’s better to do it himself while he can.

Many in Washington are wondering which monument will be next on the list, or which respected predecessor Trump is considering associating his name with: Lincoln? Jefferson? Washington? As the United States heads towards the celebration of the 250th anniversary of its founding, which Trump is hoping to underscore with the construction of a triumphal arch near the memorials of those three presidents, it doesn’t seem wise to rule out any possibility.

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