Perhaps not since the Egyptian Pharaohs built the pyramids has a political leader pursued vanity projects on the scale and with the hubris of Donald Trump.
But Trump wants not only to build monuments to himself but to replace, diminish, and otherwise destroy all rivals to his preeminence. In short, his legacy building agenda amounts to willful acts of destruction.
For Trump, size matters, from the size of his hands to the size of his crowds; from his “big,” “beautiful” wall to his Big Beautiful Bill. He’s even made a big deal about the size of his political rivals, attempting to enhance his strongman image by belittling “Little Marco” Rubio, “Little Adam Schiff” and “Liddle Bob Corker.” For Trump, bigger is better, and he never feels bigger than by belittling everyone else.
We can see his values also manifested in Trump’s buildings. He not only built the massive Trump Tower, but he also stamped his name on its façade in giant letters that Frommer’s says, “practically screams, ‘Look at me.’” (Living Large in New York City; The High Life in 8 Sights Frommer’s Travel Guides).
This same architectural scream for attention also emanates from Trump’s proposed “Triumphal Arch,” which may stand twice the size of The Lincoln Memorial while it also interrupts the sightline between the Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Like the arch itself, Trump’s monumental ego disregards any respect, honor, and sorrow reserved even for those who have sacrificed their lives for their nation.
I’m not sure what “triumph” his arch represents in the wake of our nation’s history of war over which Lincoln’s sober Memorial mourns. Hypocritically the president initially claimed the arch would honor the 250th anniversary of our nation before admitting, it will honor “me.” It’s no wonder that a group of Viet Nam veterans have filed a lawsuit to prohibit its disrespectful construction. This simulacrum of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe more suitably belongs in Las Vegas.
Integral to Trump’s strategy to elevate his own legacy is to diminish the legacy of those that preceded him. In particular, Trump fears the Kennedy family name threatens to overshadow his own. Consequently, Trump crassly subordinated the Kennedy name to his own on the façade of–can you believe it? –The Kennedy Center.
And during Trump’s subsuming control of Kennedy’s iconic cultural center, Josef Palermo, former Kennedy Center curator, reported rampant “cronyism, incompetence,” and selling “presidential access.” In other words the President of the United States charged audience members according to their seating proximity to Trump’s seat. With yet another financial venture failing due to weak ticket sales, artist cancellations, and poor attendance; Trump ordered a face-saving “renovation” intended to hollow out Kennedy’s legacy and fill it with Trump’s own gold-plated image.
It was in the same envious and vainglorious spirit that Trump had Jackie Kennedy’s iconic Rose Garden lawn replaced with what amounts to Mar a Lago’s Beach Club patio, complete with yellow striped beach umbrellas.
But more significant than literal trademark and landscape replacement, Trump cynically hand-picked as his Secretary of Health and Human Services RFK, Jr., who embodies the antithesis of the Kennedy family’s New Frontier policies. RFK, Jr.’s bizarre beliefs repudiate the efficacy of vaccines, the findings of science, and the humanitarian policies of his father and uncle. In effect, The Secretary has been used as a tool to gild Trump’s administration by tarnishing and diminishing the legacy of his own family.
Worse, while Trump defunded JFK’s USAID program, created to provide humanitarian aid for the world’s impoverished peoples, Trump’s anti-immigration policy also abandons, victimizes, and deports the world’s tired and poor “yearning to breathe free.” While the Kennedy administration championed the civil rights movement and federalized Alabama’s National Guard to enforce court ordered desegregation in Alabama public school, Trump has weaponized federal Immigrant and Custom Enforcement to harass, arrest, and deport immigrants, asylum seekers, and citizens, without due process under the law.
In short, instead of JFK’s “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”; Trump’s legacy amounts to: “Ask what you can do for me.”
So, to leave his indelible mark upon American government, Trump has gutted its institutions, reputation, icons, and laws. He’s hollowed out the Department of Education, turned the Department of Justice into the Department of Vendettas; and transformed ICE into a personal army to silence protestors and to victimize minorities. He’s fired capable civil servants, IRS agents, and scores of diplomats. In other words, to centralize power and to satisfy his monumental ego, he’s attempting to build his legacy by paradoxically destroying, defacing, and diminishing the pillars of our culture, history, and government institutions.
It turns out that behind Trump’s monumental façade of a “Great” American leader sits a very, very “small” man.
Thomas Cangelosi is a retired teacher from Avon.