U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with the media before boarding Marine One for travel to Florida from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 6, 2026. REUTERS Leah Millis
National Review writer Jeffrey Blehar says he’s certain President Donald Trump did indeed demand his name be slammed onto blue state airports in exchange for previously appropriated federal transportation money.
“The president is a proud shakedown artist and is completely shameless about it — just ask Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Machado,” said Blehar. “So, I don’t doubt for a moment that Trump floated this quid pro quo, knowing what I already do about the man’s character and governing philosophy.”
Trump is holding up millions of dollars of federal funding for New York and New Jersey, and has informed Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that he will release it in exchange for either Dulles International Airport (in Northern Virginia) or Penn Station (in New York City) beingrenamed after him.
“I’m just amused at how sweepingly egocentric Trump’s demand is,” said Blehar. “He wants one or both of two of the East Coast’s major transportation hubs named after himself, so that every day blue-state elites have to fly or train into and out of a place named after someone they loathe.”
Blehar said he doubted Trump even knew who John Foster Dulles was, and would probably “have preferred” to rename the Reagan National Airport “but even MAGA might spit the bit at the idea of Trump’s name replacing the Gipper’s.
“And while a man of Trump’s stature surely deserves to have his name added to JFK Airport in New York, he’s already tried to efface President Kennedy once, and that didn’t go so well,” said Blehar.
Mind you, Blehar is not so offended that it is the Dulles airport that Trump is seeking to claim. It is the act itself that drives his rage.
“[A]s a former D.C.-area native, I consider Dulles Airport to be one of the most odious cesspools in America. I would not be caught dead flying into or out of that ill-designed monstrosity,” Blehar said. “… Naming it after Trump feels almost appropriate in that sense, like naming a sewage treatment plant after him.”
“He won’t get what he wants,” Blehar added, “but if he did, it would veer close to karmic justice in my mind.”