President Donald Trump's latest vanity project unveiling drew withering criticism online, with the likes of George Conway and Mehdi Hasan ripping him to shreds for his "dumb" presidency.
On Friday, Trump officially unveiled a new design for U.S. passports, meant to commemorate the country's 250th birthday. In keeping with his second-term obsession with plastering his name and face on as much as he can get away with, these passports feature a likeness of Trump, standing over the Oval Office's Resolute Desk, in front of text from the Declaration of Independence. In a Truth Social post about the design, Trump claimed that it also included the message, "Welcome, but be good!", though this was not visible in any of the images he shared.
While the design itself has received its own avalanche of mockery, others have honed in on the odd message that Trump claimed the passports would include, suggesting that it indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of what passports actually are, prompting Mother Jones to ask in a headline, "Does Trump Know How Passports Work?"
In a post to X, Josh Orton, president of the Demand Justice political action committee, posed a similar question about the passports.
"'Welcome, but be good?' What?" Orton posted. "Does Trump think visiting citizens of other countries get US passports?"
Mehdi Hasan, the founder of Zeteo and former MS NOW anchor, responded to Orton's post with a searing indictment of Trump's intelligence, lambasting him as "the dumbest man" to attain higher elected office across a broad swath of the world.
"Donald Trump may be the dumbest man ever to be elected to high office in the West and I’m including Tommy Tuberville here, too," Hasan posted.
George Conway, the anti-Trump conservative lawyer, then responded to Hasan's post with his own dig at the president's lacking intelligence.
"Yep. He's dum-with-a-B dumb," Conway posted, referencing Trump's much-mocked recent claim that many people did not know that "dumb" is spelled with a B at the end.
According to the administration, the passports featuring Trump's likeness will soon become the default design issued at the passport agency in Washington D.C., with other designs remaining available online and in other states and territories. When the idea was initially put forward, there was widespread concern that it would become the only option available to anyone looking to obtain or renew their passport.
