Donald J. Trump is obsessed with naming everything after himself. Over the years, he has named everything from hotels to a urine test kit (pee and learn which vitamins and minerals you need to buy from Trump.) What accounts for his naming compulsion?
Before becoming president, Trump branded apartment and office buildings, as well as multiple properties and merchandise. He opened Trump University, later ordered shut down as a scam. He stamped his name on Trump steaks, wine, ties, underwear, vitamins, Vodka, golf memberships, and a bronze chandelier.
The Trump name used to peddle those products has roots in Germany, not Sweden as Donald Trump once claimed. The name evolved from Drumpf or Trumpf with ancestors living in Kallstadt, located in Southern Germany. It was changed to Trump sometime in the 18th century.
Trump’s grandfather, Frederick Trump, emigrated from Kallstadt to the U.S. in 1885. He appeared in the 1890 census living in Queens, New York, working as a barber and speculating in real estate. He took his small nest egg to Seattle and bought a restaurant before moving to Monte Cristo, a gold rush town, and then onto the Yukon where he owned and operated a restaurant and brothel in Whitehorse, supplying gold miners desires for dining, lodging, and sex.
Selling out and leaving with considerable earnings, Frederick returned to Kallstadt as a wealthy man and married Elizabeth Crist. Because he’d earlier failed to complete his military service, they were ordered to leave Germany, stripped of citizenship. Back in New York the couple settled in a German-speaking neighborhood. Frederick began to accumulate property and fathered Frederick Christ (Fred) Trump before dying of the Spanish flu in 1918. The business continued, listed as Elizabeth Trump & Son.
Fred expanded the family empire, building 27,000 apartments and row houses in Coney Island, Bensonhurst, Shepherd Bay, and Flatbush. He instructed his employees never to rent to Black tenants. Fred married Mary Anne MacLeod, a domestic worker who emigrated from the Scottish island of Lewis. Donald was the second of the couple’s three sons.
Since the beginning of his second term as president, Trump’s quest to put his name on everything has only grown. There seems no end to his self-aggrandizement. He splashed his name atop the Kennedy Center (until aides talked him out of it, he’d wanted to remove the Kennedy name entirely).
The annual National Parks pass carries Trump’s picture alongside that of George Washington. Those desiring permanent U.S. residency can purchase the Trump Gold Card for $5 million. Trump Babies born in 2025-6 receive $1,000 Trump savings accounts, and some prescription drugs are available at discount through TrumpRX. He is planning a Trump class of battleships and a new fighter, the F-47, memorializing the 47th U.S. president. Already the U.S. Institute of Peace has been become the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. Giant banners with his face fly above federal buildings and he’s angling to have the new Washington Commander’s football stadium named for him.
To commemorate the nation’s 250th year, Trump intends to construct a memorial arch patterned after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, only taller. So tall that it will risk obstructing air travel to Reagan National Airport.
Most extortionist of Trump naming schemes is his withholding $200 million in federal funds for a New York-New Jersey tunnel. He told Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer he’d release the funds (appropriated by Congress) in exchange for naming Dulles International Airport and Penn Station for him.
Meanwhile, the number of Trump-branded products proliferate: Besides $400 gold sneakers and $69.99 God Bless Bibles, you can buy watches, water bottles, deodorant, bed linen, cufflinks, cologne, watches, key chains, cell phones, mattresses, teddy bears and much more.
What explains Trump’s desire to plaster his family name everywhere? Some observers see it as an arrogant power play, as a need for control. Others wonder if his branding impulse can be traced to his early years. He grew up emotionally deprived as he was neither the eldest favored son nor the indulged youngest. His ailing mother was often absent, and his father was a strict disciplinarian. As a student Trump was shipped off to a private military academy to counter his bad behavior and mediocre grades.
There have been moves to rein in Trump’s pursuit of the respect he desperately craves. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. April McClain Delaney of Maryland are working to introduce legislation that would prevent self-naming by sitting presidents.
Chances of passing such a law are unlikely at present, but there does remain at least one ray of hope on the horizon. There is comfort knowing that, when Trump leaves, we can tear it all down. Whatever can be renamed once can be renamed again.
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