'It's pretty crazy': House Republicans going to the extreme to 'curry favor with Trump'

22 March

Critics of President Donald Trump often describe the MAGA movement as a "cult." Salon's Amanda Marcotte argued that just as Scientologists describe outsiders and ex-members as "suppressive persons," MAGA Republicans will disown any conservative who becomes critical of Trump or is insufficiently loyal to the president.

Other reporters highlight the extremes that Republicans go to in expressing their devotion to Trump. Politico reporters Ben Jacobs and Gregory Svirnovskiy examine some of them in an article published on March 22.

"Benjamin Franklin might have made scientific breakthroughs, invented a stove and helped to found the United States," Jacobs and Svirnovskiy explain, "but did he ever usher in a 'golden age' for the nation? In the view of Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas, that's precisely why Donald Trump — not the Founding Father — deserves to grace the $100 bill. Gill's Golden Age Act of 2025 is just one of five Trump-adulating House bills introduced in the two months since the president began his second term. Other measures would make Trump's birthday a federal holiday, rename Dulles Airport in Trump's honor, carve Trump's face on Mount Rushmore and create a new $250 bill with Trump's likeness."

The Politico reporters continue, "The multi-front effort to memorialize a president who is still alive, let alone still living in the White House, has no precedent in congressional history. While none of the bills are expected to become law, it underscores the lengths that some House Republicans are willing to go to curry favor with Trump."

The types of bills Jacobs and Svirnovskiy describe are often dismissed as silly or goofy by some Trump critics, but others find the bills disturbing.

Sean Wilentz, an author and Princeton University professor, described the bills as an effort "to transform a sitting president into a kind of deified figure" — telling Politico, "This is exactly what the American Revolution was fought to prevent."

David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University in New Jersey, argues that although there were "huge cults of personality" around President Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln," the Trump worship of 2025 is especially over the top.

Greenberg told Politico, "But even allowing for that on its own terms, it's pretty crazy. So far as I know, we don’t or we almost never do this kind of thing for living presidents, especially sitting presidents…. It's one thing to say, in the fullness of time, 'You know what? So-and-so was a great president and should be on currency or a coin or something.' This just seems like it's part of a political racket … designed to kind of celebrate the power (of Republicans) and sort of revel in it and send the message to Trump's critics and opponents that they are relatively powerless in this moment."

Read the full Politico article at this link.

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