Trump’s quest to name things after himself takes an even more desperate turn

Donald Trump’s insatiable desire to name things after himself has been clear for a very long time. And as president, he’s rapidly pushed the envelope in that regard, naming things after himself in ways it appears no previous president ever has.

But even by his standards, this quest has taken a desperate — and seemingly politically unwise — turn.  Trump last month sought to have Congress rename Dulles International Airport near DC and New York City’s Penn Station after himself.

CNN’s Manu Raju and Adam Cancryn report that Trump pitched the renamings to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as a condition for releasing billions of dollars in frozen funds for a major New York infrastructure project. Schumer, a New York Democrat, turned it down. The news was first reported by Punchbowl.

(The president had a different spin on it Friday, claiming that Schumer had been the one to suggest renaming Penn Station after him – which Schumer quickly dismissed as an “absolute lie.”)

In a way, this might sound par-for-course. Trump has already applied his name (legally or otherwise) to a bevy of things — from the Kennedy Center, to the US Institute of Peace, to a class of battleships, to savings accounts for children. He even launched a “TrumpRx” prescription drug platform on Thursday, the very same day we learned about his designs on slapping his name on major transportation hubs in DC and New York.

While things are named after presidents, experts have said there is simply no precedent for naming things after a sitting president like this. The New York Times recently dug into the data, backing up that other presidents have almost always had to wait until after leaving office.

Why this is different
But even by the standards Trump has set for himself, his bid to rename this train station and airport are on another level.

The key difference here is that the president has sought to name these things after himself not by executive action, but through leverage — by effectively trading it as a political favor.

There’s good reason he appears to be going down that road. His previous bids to slap his name on buildings, like the Kennedy Center, are quite possibly illegal, and they could just as easily be reversed — especially once he leaves office. It would be altogether shocking if the next Democratic president didn’t remove Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center.

In order for the Trump brand to have lasting power on government entities, he really needs Congress to codify the changes. But Congress is not good at acting — especially when there’s not much in it for them.

Trump is not trying to leverage the New York infrastructure project for some conservative policy win — something that matters to the Republican base or GOP members of Congress ahead of the 2026 midterms. He’s trying to leverage it for his own personal tribute and glorification.

The president could seemingly use this as leverage for any number of other purposes, but he’s sought to use it for himself.

He has been transactional about lots of things, especially in his second term. He’s even used his leverage recently to get a Venezuelan opposition leader to gift him her recently awarded Nobel Peace Prize. As I wrote back then, that raised the prospect that Trump was in effect trading his personal glorification for major foreign policy decisions.

But usually his efforts to leverage his authority for personal glorification are a little more subtle like that — with the quid pro quo a little less direct. His proposition to Schumer practically slaps you across the face in its degree of blatant self-dealing.

Republicans should probably start asking themselves how much they’re willing to entertain this level of self service.

And it’s a political loser, too
But even beyond the “yuck” factor, there’s good reason to believe this is a rather poorly conceived move. Indeed, Trump’s efforts to glorify himself appear to be a major and growing problem for him right now.

We don’t have much high-quality polling on his bids to name things after himself specifically.

But polling early last year showed around two-thirds of Americans opposed his effort to unilaterally rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” That suggests Americans overwhelmingly don’t think he should just be able to do things like this by himself.

And a CNN poll last month asked about Trump “making changes to cultural institutions such as the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian.” Fully 62% of Americans said he had “gone too far” on this count.

That question wasn’t specifically about renaming the Kennedy Center, though it’s logical to assume many had heard the board had voted to add Trump’s name in December. About 7 in 10 independents and even 3 in 10 Republicans said the president was going too far with those cultural changes.  But that might not be the worst and most relevant finding from that CNN poll.

The survey also found Trump hitting a record low on the percentage of Americans who said he “cares about people like you.” Just 33% said that applied to Trump. A whopping 77% of independents disagreed.

And Americans said 63%-37% that they disagreed with the idea that Trump “puts the good of the country above his personal gain.”

To put a fine point on that: Nearly two-thirds of Americans said Trump is mostly out for himself.

That may be fueled, in part, by perceptions Trump is enriching himself financially in office. (The White House has repeatedly maintained it’s committed to ethics and transparency.) But potential conflicts of interest are a lot more difficult to explain than PLASTERS HIS OWN NAME ACROSS A BUILDING.

And Trump’s quest to name things after himself seems especially ill-timed given the state of the economy. We’re currently in the midst of what the vast majority of Americans regard as bad economic times, and about three-quarters of Americans don’t think he’s done enough to lower prices.

The usual course for a president in such times would be to focus like a laser on righting the ship — and making people view him as worthy of bestowing honors upon him. And then, at some later date, Congress does just that.

The usual course for a president in such times would be to focus like a laser on righting the ship — and making people view him as worthy of bestowing honors upon him. And then, at some later date, Congress does just that.

But Trump would apparently rather slap his name on whatever he can, however he can — and hope it somehow sticks.