After Donald Trump lost his re-election bid in 2020 and exited the White House, his Republican allies on Capitol Hill continued to look for ways to venerate him. Rep. Greg Steube of Florida, for example, introduced legislation that would’ve renamed the immediate waters surrounding the United States, labeling them the “Donald John Trump Exclusive Economic Zone.”
Now that the president has returned to power, Steube is still thinking along similar lines, though as The Hill reported, the GOP congressman now has found something new he wants to rename.
Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) introduced a bill Thursday to rename the Washington, D.C., subway system after President Trump and his MAGA slogan. The Make Autorail Great Again Act would withhold federal funding to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, known as WMATA, until it rebrands as the Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access, or WMAGA — a similar acronym to the Make America Great Again slogan — and renames the Metrorail the Trump Train.
The legislation — which, incidentally, is quite real and not something I made up to make members of Congress appear foolish — has not yet picked up any co-sponsors, though if recent history is any guide, that will soon change.
The proposal joins a growing list of related Republican measures that are currently pending on Capitol Hill:
- There’s a bill that would create a $250 bill, and its Republican authors also want to feature Trump’s face. (Existing federal law prohibits any living person from being depicted on U.S. currency, but the bill would create a one-time exception to the prohibition.)
- There’s a similar bill that would put Trump’s face on $100 bills, replacing Benjamin Franklin.
- There’s a bill to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday.
- There’s a bill to carve Trump’s face into Mount Rushmore.
- There’s a bill to rename Dulles Airport after Trump.
What’s more, this list doesn’t include kindred efforts from the incumbent president’s sycophantic allies, including measures to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize and to allow Trump to seek a third term.
Rutgers University historian David Greenberg recently told Politico that there have been “huge cults of personality” around former presidents, “but even allowing for that on its own terms, [the spate of Trump-themed legislation is] pretty crazy.”
The point isn’t that any of these proposals are likely to pass. They’re not. The point is that these measures are unlike anything in the American tradition, reinforcing a fundamentally unhealthy trend in Republican politics.
As The New York Times recently summarized, “A competition of sorts has broken out for whom the Republican base will see as the most pro-Trump member.” From the article:
The rush of flattering legislation, some of which even the lawmakers concede is unlikely to pass, stands apart from merely carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda. … ‘It shows the power that Donald Trump has within the Republican Party these days, and that Republican members want to stay on his good side,’ said Sean M. Theriault, government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. ‘A lot of these people are in really safe districts, but they’re also thinking about what their next step is. And so if they have designs on being in the Senate or running for governor or even a position in the administration, then there’s no better way to get on his good side than to do these over-the-top moves toward him.’ That was published before most of the aforementioned bills were introduced. I’m reminded anew of something Filipe Campante, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said about these efforts: “The reason why this is bad is the very fact that it’s transparently ridiculous: It shows how this is becoming a Kim Jong-Un-style cult of personality, where the sycophants try to outdo one another in their groveling to get the attention of Dear Leader.” That competition, alas, is apparently intensifying. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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