Donald Trump on the $500 bill. Congressional Gold Medal. International Airport.
It’s Trump summer in the House, with Republicans flooding the floor with bills and resolutions honoring the former president, convicted felon and leading 2024 GOP candidate.
The former congressman said these largely symbolic gestures were a way to gain attention from Republican Party figures whose shows of support can make or break a politician.
Earlier this month, Republican Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona introduced a bill calling for the U.S. Treasury Department to resume printing $500 bills for the first time in 79 years. The high-denomination bill would feature President Trump’s “portrait” instead of the late President William McKinley. Gosar said the proposal is aimed at drawing attention to high inflation under President Joe Biden’s administration.
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There’s cash and there’s gold.
In May, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) pushed for a bill to award the President the Congressional Gold Medal for the Trump Administration’s foreign policy successes.
“They’re all trying to curry favor with the former president,” said Fred Upton, a Republican who represented southwest Michigan in the House of Representatives for 26 years before retiring in 2023. “They want recognition from the former president.”
Some are literally trying to make him famous.
The billionaire, known for his real estate and reality TV work, has put his name on everything from skyscrapers to sneakers to Bibles and even a university that closed in 2010 and was forced to pay $25 million in damages after allegedly committing fraud.
Now, in the midst of a fierce presidential election, some lawmakers are trying to put key national real estate under the Trump brand.
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On June 14, Rep. Greg Stube (R-FL) introduced a bill to name more than 4.383 million square miles of coastal exclusive economic zones — an area larger than the total land area of the United States — after former presidents.
Meanwhile, a bill to rename Dulles International Airport after Trump is awaiting consideration by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The Virginia airport is named after John Foster Dulles, who served as secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower during the early Cold War.
Democrats introduced a two-page bill in May calling for the proposed airport to name the Miami federal prison after Trump’s facility, a tongue-in-cheek attack on the ongoing legal battle.
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Trump was convicted last month of 34 counts of fraud related to the payment of hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election and faces three additional criminal indictments.
That includes federal charges over Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the election that he lost to Biden in 2020. The case is closely linked to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol by a mob fueled by Trump’s lies about election fraud.
“He’s not going to get a Congressional Medal,” Upton said of Trump. “There’s nothing to gain from that. He’s too harmful. It’s a bit of a stretch to move forward with that after what happened on January 6th.”
Upton said the naming effort will require patience and bipartisanship. “In time, he’ll get something,” the former congressman told USA Today.
The old Washington National Airport, located on the nation’s capital’s outskirts in Arlington, Virginia, was renamed after popular Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1998, nearly a decade after he left office, in a law signed by Democrat Bill Clinton.
