April 11, 2026, 3:01 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON – In a rare 1994 interview, President Donald Trump’s mother described the first time her husband, New York developer Fred Trump, saw the black personal helicopter their son had bought.
“Of course, my husband, first thing he saw was the helicopter said TRUMP on it. He was satisfied,” the late Mary MacLeod Trump said, laughing, in an interview with Raidió Teilifís Éireann, Ireland’s public service broadcaster.
The president is very much his father’s son.
Throughout his career as a businessman, Trump has tended to view all manner of tangible things as branding opportunities – putting his name on hotels, golf courses, wines and steaks. Even a Bible.
In his second term as POTUS, Trump has sought to burnish his legacy by naming governmental entities after himself, too. But what passes for branding in commercial circles is antithetical to democratic values when a sitting president puts his name on federal property and policy initiatives, say experts.
Enabled by his appointees and admirers, the 79-year-old commander-in-chief’s name has been inserted into decades-old establishments such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the U.S. Institute of Peace. He’s also slapped his name on key policies including TrumpRX, Trump Gold Card, Trump Coin and Trump Accounts.
Federal buildings, including the Department of Labor, Department of Agriculture and Department of Justice, unfurled large banners with Trump’s face on them over the past few months.
Lawmakers have sought to cater to Trump’s ego with legislation to put him on Mount Rushmore.
The latest canvas? The Treasury Department announced in March that Trump’s signature will appear on future U.S. paper currency in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary.
“There is no more powerful way to recognize the historic achievements of our great country and President Donald J. Trump than U.S dollar bills bearing his name, and it is only appropriate that this historic currency be issued at the Semiquincentennial,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in a statement.
Trump takes Manhattan
His penchant for naming things after himself comes as no surprise to Barbara Res, a former executive vice president at Trump Organization who oversaw construction. She worked on major projects like Trump Tower in the 1980s.
“He got it from his father, Fred Trump,” Res said of the elder Trump, a developer who built thousands of apartments and row houses in Queens and Brooklyn following World War II. His biggest project, Trump Village, built in 1964, was the first project to bear the family name.
“He (the president) was raised to believe that he was different and his family was different. And by different, I mean better than and more important than anyone else,” said Res, who worked as a close adviser to Trump for 18 years, from the late 1970s to early 1990s.
While his father’s business was restricted to the outer boroughs, Queens-raised Donald Trump set his sights on Manhattan. He made waves with his transformation of the crumbling Hotel Commodore into the Grand Hyatt in the 1970s. The first building to feature the family name in gold letters was his second project – Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, which completed construction in 1983.
By 2015, more than 15 buildings in New York City bore the Trump name – though some of the signs have since been taken down by building associations.
“He put his name on any building he built while I was there,” Res said, adding that a super yacht he bought from a Saudi billionaire was renamed the “Trump Princess.”
When he bought Eastern Air Lines Shuttle from Texas Air Corporation in 1988, he renamed the fleet Trump Shuttle.
What was her take on the naming spree?
“So what is the best possible, highest-quality, most luxurious, most important name? Seriously – Trump,” Res said with a sarcastic laugh.
Reminiscent of authoritarian regimes, experts say
What’s branding in business is problematic in governance.
Trump plastering his name and likeness on federal initiatives and real estate is reminiscent of authoritarian regimes, and central to developing the “personality cult,” experts say.
For instance, portraits of Kim II Sung, the founder and supreme leader of North Korea, and Kim Jong Il, the father of current leader Kim Jong Un, are mandatory in public places like train stations, hospitals, schools and factories.
Images of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s to 1953, appeared everywhere during that period, emblazoned across buildings and lining the streets, carried in parades and woven into carpets, according to art historian Anita Pisch, who analyzed the construction of Joseph Stalin’s public persona in her book, “The Personality Cult of Stalin in Soviet Posters, 1929–1953: Archetypes, Inventions and Fabrications.”
“Modern personality cults are possible due to the capability to disseminate images of the leader” far and wide and saturate public spaces with “cult products,” Pisch writes in her book.
Throughout history, when countries begin putting their living leaders on their currency or their flag, or hanging their leaders’ pictures everywhere, that’s almost always associated with autocracy, said Jeffrey Engel, founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
“The leader is the state is what those messages are trying to convey,” he said. “And in our country, the leader’s not the state, the people are the state.”
‘There is no precedent in American history’
Engel, who has authored or edited 13 books on American foreign policy, said there are two reasons why presidents’ names are traditionally only added to buildings and other things after their death.
“First, because it’s gauche,” he said. “Second, more importantly, this is still a constitutional republic.”
Even presidents who thought very highly of themselves still recognized that they were only temporarily holding the office, Engel said: “Basically, from the moment they got it, they were keeping it warm for the next person.”
“I’ve run out of synonyms for the word unprecedented when it comes to Trump,” said Engel. “There is no precedent in American history, even for most egoistic presidents to put their own names on things.”
Trump has often pointed to name changes as being someone else’s idea. With the Trump-Kennedy center, he said it was the board who decided it. After removing all 18 members of the board, he handpicked members to fill the seats and installed himself as the chairman.
“He has made it very clear that the way to power and influence in his administration is to praise and compliment him,” said Engel. “So of course the people he appoints are going to do that.”
Trump has said the $400 million White House ballroom, which is being financed by private donors and American companies, is expected to be completed by 2028, before he leaves office.
So far, the president has not revealed what the 90,000-square-foot addition he has championed would be named if it clears legal obstacles.
Asked if he had any guesses, Engel said: “I would bet my mortgage that the word Trump is in the name of the ballroom somewhere.”
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal.
