By Jeffrey Blehar
I’d like to add a brief word on one of the more
outrageously predictable stories out of the Trump White House. (And there are
so very many this Friday afternoon — Trump posted and deleted a racist video portraying Barack and
Michelle Obama as apes over on Truth Social, then had his spokesman blame it on
“staffer
error.”) NBC News reports that apparently the president is holding up
millions of dollars of already-appropriated federal transportation funding for
New York and New Jersey, and has informed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
that he will release it in exchange for either Dulles International Airport (in
Northern Virginia) or Penn Station (in New York City) being renamed after
him.
I know that my colleague Jim Geraghty already touched on the absurd vainglory of this earlier in the
morning, but since it’s my professional goal to own the “Trump Names Stuff
After Himself” beat, I feel required to offer my two cents as well. Let’s clear
away the obvious point first: If true, this is conduct unbecoming of a
president, even as it is entirely in keeping with Trump’s prior behavior. (See:
the soon-to-be-shuttered “Donald J. Trump and the John F.
Kennedy Memorial Center.”) The president is a proud shakedown artist and is
completely shameless about it — just ask Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Machado. So I don’t doubt for a moment that Trump
floated this quid pro quo, knowing what I already do about the man’s character
and governing philosophy. As former Illinois Governor (and Trump pardonee) Rod
Blagojevich might have observed, “Federal funding is a valuable f***ing
thing, you don’t just give it away for nothing.”
I’m just amused at how sweepingly egocentric Trump’s
demand is: He wants one or both of two of the East Coast’s major transportation
hubs named after himself, so that every day blue-state elites have to fly or
train into and out of a place named after someone they loathe. How did he
arrive at Dulles Airport in particular? Does Donald Trump even know who John
Foster Dulles is? (Answer: a key architect of America’s Cold War strategy as
well as NATO — an organization Trump has notably little respect for.)
My guess is via process of elimination: He’d have
preferred to demand Reagan National Airport be renamed after him instead, but
even MAGA might spit the bit at the idea of Trump’s name replacing the
Gipper’s. And while a man of Trump’s stature surely deserves to have his name
added to JFK Airport in New York, he’s already tried to efface President
Kennedy once, and that didn’t go so well. (To be fair, I wouldn’t mind if they
shut JFK Airport down for the next two years for “repairs” — the place is cursed.)
Trump could demand naming rights over EWR, but I suspect that even he would
feel embarrassed to see his name associated with Newark.
Honestly, I’m less upset about this than about Trump’s
many other bizarre mini-scandals, for the simple reason that, as a former
D.C.-area native, I consider Dulles Airport to be one of the most odious
cesspools in America. I would not be caught dead flying into or out of that
ill-designed monstrosity, one of the most hideous airports in America to
navigate. (I’m convinced that if the rest of America had to experience the
inconvenience of “people-movers” we would witness a spontaneous populist
uprising.) Naming it after Trump feels almost appropriate in that sense, like
naming a sewage treatment plant after him. He won’t get what he wants, but if
he did, it would veer close to karmic justice in my mind.
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