Grandiose efforts to boost Donald Trump’s ego are costing America a fortune.
Trump’s second term is still shy of the six-month mark, but already, millions have been spent to flatter him.
Just three stunts to fluff the president have already totaled upward of a billion dollars, reported Rolling Stone Friday. They include a Bastille Day–inspired military parade to celebrate Trump’s birthday, the repurposing of an ultraluxury jumbo jet from Qatar for Air Force One (which Trump is setting up so no one else can use it after he leaves the White House), and a TV ad campaign featuring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem zealously thanking the president (in the background, the Trump campaign’s top vendor is quietly cashing in on the DHS-funded ad spot).
And on Friday, Trump announced that the White House would be undergoing a massive renovation by way of adding a ballroom to the symbol of American democracy. (Trump has previously promised to pay for the $100 million expansion himself, but only time will tell if the convicted fraudster will actually follow through or take the funds from public coffers.)
But the glitz and glam is about more than simply placating the president, according to political scientists. Instead, the whole spectacle is attached to Trump’s authoritarian leanings.
“They have to do with a president who needs to be not only at the center of a media circus, but who needs to be told ritualistically over and over how great he is,” Anthony DiMaggio, author of Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here, told Rolling Stone. “What’s interesting to me about this, as a political scientist, is that it’s not just a personality-based thing or a defect. It’s a broader pattern that has to do with behaviors that are overlapping with authoritarian politics and ideology.”
But the itch doesn’t stop at gift receiving. Trump’s second-term quest to nix Washington’s so-called “deep state” and replace it with an army of MAGA yes-men has so far been successful. At Cabinet meetings and press briefings, officials from across the political landscape are quick to puff up the president. The problem became particularly evident in April, when Trump wheeled out his “Liberation Day” tariff plan using figures that nobody in his vicinity had dared to notify him were founded on bad math.
The result is a Trumpian loyalty more akin to a religion than a political ideology: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has pleaded with Congress to trust the president’s economic will. Cabinet meetings begin with a round-robin of gushing for Trump’s performance. The White House has spent money producing propaganda that does little more than thank Trump for his agenda.
Even congressional Republicans, who are supposed to be detached from Trump’s influence, have repeatedly kowtowed to the president’s will.
The sycophantic displays between Trump and his advisers give off “Dear Leader” vibes, similar to “what you would see with Kim Jong Un or [Vladimir] Putin,” Democracy Defenders Fund’s Virginia Canter told Rolling Stone, noting that the president treats his Cabinet members as his “personal staff.”
“They’re there to stroke his ego,” Canter said.
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