Donald Trump Airport? Trump on the $500 bill? Republicans can't stop honoring ex-president
Donald Trump on the $500 bill. A Congressional gold medal. An international airport.
It’s the Summer of Trump in the House of Representatives, where Republican lawmakers have flooded the chamber with bills and resolutions honoring the former president, convicted felon and 2024 GOP front-runner.
These largely symbolic gestures are a way to get noticed by the Republican powerhouse, who can make or break politicians with his endorsements, according to a former member of Congress.
Earlier this month, Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., introduced a bill requiring the U.S. Treasury to start printing $500 bills again after 79 years, with the pricey legal tender now “featuring a portrait” of Trump in place of the late President William McKinley. Gosar said the proposal was meant to draw attention to high inflation under Joe Biden.
More: Biden ad attacks 'convicted criminal' Trump in $50M paid media blitz
There’s cash, and then there’s gold.
In May, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., pushed a bill to award Trump the Congressional Gold Medal for his administration’s foreign policy successes.
“They’re all trying to curry favor from the former president,” said Fred Upton, a Republican who represented southwest Michigan in the House for 26 years before retiring in 2023. “They want to be recognized by him.”
Some are literally trying to put him on the map.
The real estate and reality TV billionaire has slapped his name on everything from skyscrapers to sneakers and Bibles, to a purported university that closed in 2010 and had to pay $25 million restitution over fraud allegations.
Now, in the heat of a neck-in-neck presidential election, some members of Congress are looking to place important national real estate under the Trump brand.
More: OnPolitics: Black voters aren't thrilled with Biden but dislike Trump more
On June 14, Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., put forward legislation to name the country’s coastal exclusive economic zone – an area of more than 4,383,000 square miles, bigger than the total U.S. land mass – for the former president.
Meanwhile, a bill to rename Dulles International Airport for Trump is awaiting action by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. The Virginia airport is named for John Foster Dulles, who served as secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the early days of the Cold War.
Democrats responded to the airport proposal in May with a two-page bill seeking to name the Miami Federal Correctional Institution for Trump, a snarky poke at his ongoing legal battles.
More: 'Trump too small'. Supreme Court says jab at Trump can't be trademarked
In addition to his conviction last month on 34 counts of fraud over hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, Trump faces three more criminal indictments.
That includes federal charges over Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden − a case closely linked with the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress by a mob inflamed by Trump’s stolen election lies.
“He’s not getting a congressional medal,” Upton said of Trump. “There’s nothing on that plate. He’s too toxic. It’s a little bit of a stretch for that to go forward based on what happened on Jan. 6.”
Naming, Upton said, requires patience – and bipartisanship. In time, “He’ll get something,” the former lawmaker told USA TODAY.
The former Washington National Airport, just outside the nation’s capital in Arlington, Virginia, was renamed for President Ronald Reagan in 1998, nearly a decade after the popular Republican left office, in a law signed by Democrat Bill Clinton.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump on the $500 bill? Flurry of GOP bills honor ex-president
