First Draft: In the Court of Kim Jong Trump
Not content with renaming landmarks and airports and signing money, the president wants to put his face in your passport. Plus: Democrats still have work to do before the midterm elections.
On this day in 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon gave in to pressure over the Watergate scandal and released 46 transcripts of taped White House conversations. It failed to placate investigators of the 1972 break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee, and on Aug. 8, 1974, Nixon resigned his office. The good ol’ days when presidential crimes had consequences…
Good morning! Andrew here, covering another typical day in Donald Trump’s America, one in which we learned the president’s face will be printed on US passports, and the Justice Department disclosed it’s prosecuting the former FBI director over a trivial tweet, and the Federal Communications Commission is threatening to revoke a major corporate network’s broadcast licenses over a comedian’s joke. What will today have in store?
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ Trump continues his drive to turn the US into a tinpot dictatorship, Democrats still need to calibrate their message on corruption, Kash Patel beclowns himself yet again, and a killer ICE agent is back at work.
Narcissist-in-Chief
Late last year, our team at Zeteo began discussing in editorial meetings the many ways in which President Donald Trump has been turning the United States into an Americanized North Korea.
It took a few months to find the right moment to send my colleague Prem around Washington, DC, to produce this stellar video on how Trump was turning the US capital into cultish Pyongyang, given the time we needed to devote to the president’s wars, both foreign and domestic. That turned out to be a good thing for our reporting, because Trump kept generating relevant material.
And wow, does he continue to do so.
According to a report Tuesday from the Bulwark, which the administration tried to devalue by giving it to Fox as an “exclusive,” Trump’s face will soon appear on some US passports – supposedly to “commemorate” America’s 250th anniversary, and not just our president’s immense love for himself.
It’s an absurd development, but somehow not even a surprise: Trump cultists are slapping his name and likeness on everything they can.
There’s the “Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace” in Washington, as well as the “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.” Republicans in Florida passed a bill to rebrand the airport in Palm Beach, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, the “President Donald J. Trump International Airport.” They made a “President Donald J. Trump Blvd.” in Palm Beach, too.
The National Park Service is putting Trump’s face on park passes, alongside George Washington. Please be aware: your pass will be voided if you cover Trump’s mug with a sticker.
The administration is planning to print Trump’s signature on paper currency. The treasury helpfully noted that this would be “the first time in history … a sitting president” had been so featured, while claiming it was in “honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America.”
Trump also wants to put his face on $1 coins. That would make him the first living president to have his likeness on US currency, which makes sense, given it has been against the law since 1866. The administration is also prepared to put Trump’s face on extra-large commemorative gold coins – again, supposedly to celebrate America’s 250th birthday.