There's a supermoon just around the corner — and it comes with a twist
President Donald Trump announced a few months ago that he would likely name the large White House ballroom after himself. This week, the board of the Kennedy Center voted to allow Trump to add his own name to the name of historic building so it will be called the Trump-Kennedy Center.
The Bulwark's Andrew Egger penned a satirical morning newsletter post proposing that Americans simply let Trump remake The Moon in his image as well.
"He’s been acting more like Caligula — spending more and more time on a series of empty gestures intended to spite his enemies and feed his own ego," Egger began.
Another project of Trump's this week was to install "trollish plaques beneath a row of presidential portraits at the residence, sketching out a brief narrative that reads all of U.S. history as mere prelude to the capstone project of his reign."
The Trump-Kennedy Center plan is "a classic Trump-era story," Egger explained. "One where the facts are so openly clownish that one struggles to know how seriously to take it."
He said that on one hand it's "silly" to see the president of the United States focusing his time on vanity projects. However, as Egger wrote back in March: “Every minute spent critiquing the upholstery in the Kennedy concert hall is one less minute the president has to search out new beefs with Canada or personally vet FBI agents to no-knock Liz Cheney’s home.”
The other battle over such issues, however, deal specifically with the broader debate over presidential authority. The Supreme Court has given Trump supreme authority over Congress in several cases litigated over the course of his first year in office. The name of things like the Kennedy Center and the Department of Defense, were established by U.S. laws through an act of Congress.
"But in the strange law-optional world into which Trump is trying to usher us, that simple fact—words in the U.S. code—isn’t what matters. What matters is that the White House controls the actual power in question ... isn’t this how they’re running everything these days?" he askd.
Eggar closed by speculating what Trump will decide is next: the Trump Highway, the Trump-Washington Monument? The Trump-Lincoln Bedroom?
"We’re only a year down, after all. Who knows how far his ambitions will reach in three more? Let’s get the big guy’s name on the moon," said Egger.