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On February 13 and 14, President Donald J. Trump’s representatives filed three applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark his name for future use on an airport. As trademark lawyer Josh Gerben of Gerben IP noted, the application also covers merchandise branded “President Donald J. Trump International Airport,” “Donald J. Trump International Airport,” and “DJT,” including “clothing, handbags, luggage, jewelry, watches, and tie clips.”
Any airport adopting the Trump name would have to get a license to use the name, potentially paying a licensing fee. While it is common for public officials to have landmarks named after them, “never in the history of the United States” has “a sitting president’s private company…sought trademark rights” before such a naming.
The Trump grab for an airport named after him is just the latest grift in a presidential term that experts so far estimate has enriched the Trump family by at least $4 billion. That windfall includes the United Arab Emirates’ sovereign wealth fund buying a 49% stake in the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto company for $500 million days before Trump took office.
Earlier this month, Trump, his sons Don Jr. and Eric, and the Trump Organization sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Treasury Department for $10 billion in damages after an IRS contractor during Trump’s own first term was convicted of leaking their tax information, along with that of thousands of other Americans who are not suing, to news outlets. Trump has control over the IRS, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says he will write whatever check he is told to cut. This move advances Trump’s use of the presidency to enrich himself into the realm of autocratic rulers who move their country’s money to their own accounts.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said “President Trump’s assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest.”
The Framers had no illusions: They constructed the Constitution to pit men’s ambitions against each other so no individual could gain enough power to become a tyrant. Washington warned that "Fierce partisanship would lead partisans to seek absolute power through an individual who “turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty”.
Such partisanship, he said, would “distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration,” agitate “the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms,” kindle “the animosity of one part against another,” foment “occasionally riot and insurrection,” and open “the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”
And as Washington predicted, today’s Republicans have replaced the prerogatives of Congress with loyalty to Trump. They have also ignored the vices of Trump and his loyalists. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained to a podcaster on February 12 why he doesn’t worry about Covid. “I’m not scared of a germ,” he said. “I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats.”
Reuters reported yesterday that Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought took $15 million in unlawfully impounded money that Congress had appropriated for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which fed starving children, for his own security detail. The Wall Street Journal reported that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and her affair partner Corey Lewandowski travel in a $70 million luxury 737 MAX jet with a private cabin in the back.
Over all are the horrors of the Epstein files, in which Trump’s name appears so often observers have suggested it is the one place that could legitimately be rebranded with Trump’s name as the Trump-Epstein files.
And so, Washington’s dire warnings have come true.
Profiting off his name is only part of why Trump appears to want to splash it anywhere he can: It’s also about his legacy. In a tour of George Washington’s Virginia home, Mount Vernon, in April 2019, Trump expressed surprise that the first president hadn’t named any of his property after himself. “If he was smart, he would’ve put his name on it,” Trump said. “You’ve got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.”
As Washington predicted, the presidents Americans revere despite their faults—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt—are those who used the enormous power of the U.S. government not for their own aggrandizement but to secure and expand the rights and the prosperity of the American people.
Trump has made no secret of wanting his image carved onto Mount Rushmore. In September 2025 the IRS granted tax-exempt status to the Donald Trump Mount Rushmore Memorial Legacy, making it a charity that can accept tax-free donations.
Happy Presidents Day 2026.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved.
© 2015 Mutual Fund Observer. All rights reserved. Powered by Vanilla
Comments
But his name will be ripped from every sign and every wall in a few years time. Tarnished, evil and embarrassing. I'd rather see Nixon Intl Airport than a Trump Intl Airport.