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The US treasury has drafted a design for a $1 coin featuring Donald Trump on both sides, for the purpose of “honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUS”, according to treasury officials.
Meanwhile, Trump reportedly wants the Washington Commanders to name their planned $3.7bn stadium after him. A senior White House source told ESPN: “It’s what the president wants, and it will probably happen.”
The giant $300m ballroom that Trump is adding to the White House is called “the President Donald J Trump Ballroom” on the list of donors to the project, and senior administration officials told ABC the name was likely to stick – though Trump has since said he is not planning to name it after himself.
Still, Trump is moving to immortalize himself with his name etched far and wide.
This is what fascist dictators have done when in power. Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini built monuments to glorify themselves so they’d be exalted in history.
Democracies prefer to memorialize their heroes after they’ve died, and only if the public wants them commemorated.
Trump deserves to be remembered – but not as a hero. To the contrary: it is our solemn duty to ensure he is remembered for all he has done and may still do to destroy American democracy.
He must be remembered as the president who claimed without evidence that an election was “stolen” from him. Who then instigated a coup attempt that included false electors and was followed by an assault on the US Capitol that resulted in five deaths and injuries to 174 police officers.
He should be remembered as the president who, after being re-elected, tried to erase the nation’s memory of what he had done by pardoning 1,600 people connected with the Capitol attack and 77 who were accused of trying to overturn the 2020 election. He called the rioters “patriots”.
He must be remembered as the president who then usurped the powers of Congress. Who denied people due process of law. Who prosecuted his political opponents. Who violated international law by killing people he labeled enemy combatants. Who sent the military into American cities over the objections of their mayors and governors.
We must not allow Trump to erase this history with false tributes to himself, etched into silver, marble or granite.
Instead, after he is gone, a monument should be erected to remind future generations of Trump’s treachery and the treachery of officials who supported him.
It would be a simple building constructed of iron and cement, containing the records of his attacks on democracy and the names of everyone who aided him.
Over its doorway would be the words “Trump’s Treason”.
It would be situated on the White House lawn where the Trump ballroom (since demolished) once stood. It would face outward toward Pennsylvania Avenue so that families visiting the nation’s capital – including those commemorating the 500th anniversary of the US – have easy access, and will long remember this catastrophe.
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Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now
