(AFP) – While returning to Washington from Florida aboard Air Force One on Sunday, President Donald Trump chatted with journalists for a few minutes about the Iran war. But then he abruptly pulled out large color images of the ballroom he is building on the East Wing of the White House and talked extensively about the neoclassical building, praising its “hand-carved” Corinthian columns as “the best, most beautiful by far.” The president is at heart a real estate developer, and it shows.
“Everything’s drone proof and bulletproof,” an animated Trump said of the ballroom. “I’m so busy that I don’t have time to do this. I’m fighting wars and other things. But this is very important because this is going to be with us for a long time.” The ballroom, which involved demolishing the historic East Wing and drew thousands of critical comments from the public, is just one of several Trump projects aimed at leaving his mark on the American landscape.
– Promoting his brand –
Since becoming president, Trump has essentially replicated the formula that characterized his career as a businessman: promoting his name like a brand, engraved in gold letters on his golf clubs, hotels, and merchandise. Barely into the second year of his second term in office, Trump has already added his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, thanks to a hand-picked board of directors, and to the Institute of Peace in the nation’s capital.
He has already hung portraits of himself inside the White House, breaking with the tradition that a president wait until the end of his term to be invited by a successor to unveil a portrait. Last Friday, the US Treasury announced that Trump’s signature would appear on future US banknotes, also a first for a sitting president. And this year he will have a commemorative coin bearing his image, minted to mark America’s 250th birthday.
– Sheer scale –
Trump has also proposed building an enormous, 250-foot tall “Independence Arch” — reminiscent of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe — on the bank of the Potomac River near the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery. Since Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), American presidents have traditionally erected libraries bearing their names where documents and objects related to their terms in office are kept and displayed. But the projects spearheaded by Trump stand out for their sheer scale and self-promotional nature.
On Monday, his son Eric Trump posted computer-generated images of a future Trump Library on X, showing an imposing skyscraper on the Miami waterfront. Inside, the images showed an auditorium dominated by a gigantic golden statue of Trump. Also on Monday, Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a law renaming Palm Beach International Airport — not far from the US leader’s Mar-a-Lago estate — the President Donald J. Trump International Airport. The US president already has a boulevard leading to the airport named after him.
– Aurélia END
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