If only he deserved such an honor, or ever will.
His self-absorption and self-promotion know no bounds. Previously, he had mused on how great it would be to make him the equal in stone of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. He believes he can jawbone his way to a peace prize he is massively unqualified to receive. Now there is this proposal:
We aren’t sure what he means when he has “In God We Trust” as part of his image. He does have a pretty elevated image of himself but this much?
The Treasury Department apparently is on the verge of producing these things. Samples have been circulated within the Mint’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing and “set-up” coins have been ordered stamped. Those are practice coins that make sure the new coins are properly designed when they go into production.
Not that it matters to Trump, but some people believe the coin violates part of an 1866 law. “No portrait or likeness of any living person shall be engraved or placed upon any of the bonds, securities, notes or postal currency of the United States,” it says. The provision was recently removed from the Treasury Department’s web page.
Reports in the public press note that the first Trump administration reversed a Treasury Department plan to take Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill and replace him with the image of 19th century Black civil rights leader Harriet Tubman. Trump called the plan “pure political corruptness.”
The creation of the Trump Dollar had not been known until The Treasurer of the United States, Brandon Beach, posted on social media draft images of the coin—which will be legal tender going into circulation next year. The blog site Defector.com quotes a Treasury Department source saying the usual process for creating such commemorative coins takes months and includes a review by the Citizens Coin Advisory Committee that last met on September 16 without any indication such a coin was in the works.
This coin proposal was whipped from nothing into pre-production, says the source, in four days—September 29-October 2.
Commemorative Coins also are supposed to be approved by Congress. Congress hasn’t heard anything about this plan.
The Treasury Department put out a statement to USA TODAY puffing about the “historic leadership” of President Trump and saying, “While a final $1 dollar (our faithful editor hopes you will pardon the department’s redundancy) design has not yet been selected to commemorate the United States semiquincentennial, this first draft reflects well the enduring spirit of our country and democracy, even in the face of immense obstacles.
Nine years ago, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco underlined the ban on living persons appearing on our currency: “To avoid the appearance of a monarchy, it was long-standing tradition to only feature portraits of deceased individuals on currency and coin. That tradition became law with an 1866 Act of Congress.”
The Legal Institute at the Cornell Law School cites federal law: 31 U.S. Code 5112—“No coin issued may bear the image of a living former or current President.”
Congress passed a collectible coin law in 2020, during Trump’s first term authorizing the issuance of five different designs of commemorative coins for the nation’s 250th birthday. The Congress said one of the coins should honor a woman and others may honor innovators and Native Americans. There’s nothing about a President hijacking the idea.
Well, we all know of Trump’s disdain for the Constitution, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve. And we all know that he idolizes himself above all others who as individuals or as groups put him deep in their shadows in all kinds of criteria.
USA Today columnist Rex Huppke encapsulated the situation well, writing—
“The planned coin will be a commemorative, presumably commemorating how everything is perfect now that Trump is president again! Perfect, as long as you disregard the fact that the government is shut down, National Guard troops are being dispatched to cities Trump diesn’t like, U. S. citizens ae routinely eing rounded up by masked and warrantless immigration agents inflation and food prices are rising, electricity prices are rising, the job market is weak, the president’s poll numbers are tanking , [and] Republicans are doing everything to avoid releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files, and the 79-year-old Trump himself doesn’t seeme entirely tethered to reality.”
Perhaps while his Treasury Department prepares to stamp thousands of these coins honoring him, it also can stamp out his own Nobel Peace Prize Medal—with his profile from the coin replacing that of Alfred Nobel. Better yet, create the Trump Peace Prize that he can award to himself, much the same way he consistently wins the club championship at Mar-a-Liego. That’ll show those stuffy people in Stockholm a thing or two.
Or maybe he can arrange to ship a few thousand of these coins to his subjects to be used to pay his tariffs on many of the things he has arranged for his peasants to pay more for.
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