‘Trump Airport’ could be a new cash cow for the president’s empire |
‘Trump Airport’ could be a new cash cow for the president’s empire
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Travellers to Florida take note. Palm Beach International Airport will soon be renamed the President Donald J. Trump International Airport, complete with new call letters: DJT. When the name-change takes effect in July, it will not only be the first time an airport will be named after a sitting president, but the first time such an arrangement can create new revenue streams for him and his family. We will all be paying for it, and not only in taxes.
Trump has a tradition of using government infrastructure as a public affirmation of his grasp on power. In his second term, he has already put his name on government buildings, monuments, currency and public initiatives.
Most Americans have brushed off this habit as clever marketing or a harmless ego trip, but there is something more insidious at work here — which is why it’s a tactic that autocrats have used for centuries.
“The leader must be everywhere, his face must be everywhere, his name must be everywhere, and his aesthetic, his taste must be reflected in buildings, in the people around him,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at NYU told NPR. “The autocrat wants to remake the world in his own image.”
The logic is this: If Trump is America, then his corrupt self-dealing is also American. If Trump is America’s forever leader, then the patriotic thing for elected officials........