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Shockingly, inexplicably, Donald Trump keeps finding new places to put his face. Also, his name. Or initials. Or one of those drawings a turkey a kid does by tracing the outline of their hand. He’s got his ballroom, the Kennedy Center, and a proposed 250ft arch that would become one of the tallest buildings in all of Washington DC – a city with longstanding height restrictions for development. His signature will be on US dollars later this year, in a first for a sitting president. I’d ask if he was getting tired of all the attention, but I think we know the answer to that. Up next is a commemorative gold coin – worth exactly $1 – featuring Trump’s scowling visage looming menacingly over the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.
It’s a pretty classic Trump pose, designed to make a nearly-80-year-old man with a variety of mystery bruises who eats McDonald’s on a regular basis look physically intimidating. Beyond the president sporting a classic gen Z pout, the Commission of Fine Arts (a panel appointed by You Know Who) recommended this coin be “as large as possible”, which immediately makes me think of the giant penny Bruce Wayne keeps in the Batcave. Good luck trying to feed a parking meter with that.
This is a curious thing to be worried about while a deeply unpopular war causes gas prices to surge and the economy tanks. As of this writing, CNN identifies the primary motivator of the economy as “extreme fear”, which is coincidentally also my primary motivator in everything. How much will this commemorative coin even be worth by the end of Trump’s second term? Maybe even less than these coins minted to celebrate the release of the 1998 feature film Star Trek: Insurrection (a movie I’m sure many Trump supporters have seen).
American coins tend to have faces of prominent individuals. Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Johnny Depp. We call one side of a coin “heads” for a reason. For some reason, though, this special Trump coin isn’t just his head. It’s, as I mentioned, him mounting his own desk. But what to do with the other side? Going with the generic bald eagle, as Trump has done here, is a pretty classic choice. No one can be too mad about that, other than huge fans of the Liberty Bell or a buffalo or something.
For the nickel, we settled on a portrait of our third president, Thomas Jefferson. On the reverse, you get a representation of Jefferson’s historic plantation, Monticello. Not technically a government building, not an official symbol of the nation. That says to me that the back of a coin can be pretty much anything. We’ve got some leeway here to get creative, so why didn’t Donald Trump?
If I had some authority over this project (which I should), I would have workshopped a few other concepts that pay tribute to the big man, just like the nickel nods to Jefferson’s legacy. Donald Trump first came to prominence as a real estate developer and landlord in Manhattan, so why not the building he bought on 100 Central Park South in 1981?
It was a seminal purchase for the future commander-in-chief, cementing his reputation in New York as a shrewd businessperson who could get deals done with staggering efficiency. Trump became a well-known landlord in the city, thanks to repeated attempts to bully residents out of the rent-controlled building, according to lawsuits, so he could demolish the tower and replace it. He was accused of ruthlessly cutting water from homes, threatening evictions, and ignoring necessary repairs for things like water leaks. Trump repeatedly denied the claims, but he never got to blow up his own building. Fortunately for him, the office of the presidency allowed him to blow up plenty of other things.
Or how about the ad Trump took out in four separate New York City newspapers attacking the Central Park Five, Black and Latino men wrongfully accused as teenagers of sexually assaulting a white woman in the park? I guess it would be hard to read the ad’s text on a coin, but at least you get the part about bringing back the death penalty, which would have been really awkward for Mr Trump, since the accused were later convicted of a crime they didn’t commit.
But what about The Apprentice? Perhaps President Trump’s most important achievement prior to taking office, as the NBC reality show took him from curious pseudo-celebrity to superstar host of one of the most popular programs on television. If he had never appeared on The Apprentice, then it’s highly unlikely he ever would have been interviewed by Access Hollywood. What a shame that would have been.
There are almost too many options for the Donald Trump commemorative coin, but the real defining image of this presidency should be the bank statement of the average American citizen. Stagnant job growth, news of fresh layoffs hitting seemingly every day, rising inflation, and high energy costs. That’s how I’d like to remember him, though I’m sure it’s something he’d love to forget.
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Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist
