Deleting Donald Trump, Letter By Letter

The name of this blight on America should only survive on buildings as a warning

Back in 2016, Manhattan residents of a Trump building petitioned to have his name removed. They didn’t want to be associated with him. (Photo by Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)

On Friday, a New York federal judge temporarily released frozen funds denied by Donald Trump for the $16 billion Gateway Project, which will build a new ‍commuter rail tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey ‍and fix a decaying, century-old tunnel. This major infrastructure upgrade will serve over 200,000 travelers and 425 trains daily. Suspending the project would throw 1,000 construction workers out of their jobs.

The judge’s ruling is good news, but it turns out the vengeful Trump wasn’t just trying to throw a wrench in the gears of another blue state project. Reports surfaced in the last few days that Trump tried to extort Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer by demanding that New York’s Penn Station and Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport be renamed for him.

It’s another outrageous attempt by the malignant Trump to do what feeds his sad ego, rather than do his actual job for the benefit of Americans. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called Trump’s demand “ridiculous,” noting that ”naming rights aren’t tradable as part of any negotiations, and neither is the dignity of New Yorkers.”

Of course, once Trump’s self-serving plot went public, Trump lied that it was all Schumer’s idea, something that obviously defies logic. Schumer’s posted response: “Absolute lie. He knows it. Everyone knows it.”

Anyone who’s paid attention the last few months can see what’s happening. This crumbling 79-year-old narcissist who’s been asking if he’ll get into heaven—a hilarious notion—is desperate to affix his name anywhere and everywhere that will last longer than he will.

Most recently, that has included attaching his poisonous moniker on the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. The result: The public and the performers began to abandon the long-honored institution, causing Trump to claim the Kennedy Center needed to be shuttered for two years for new construction. In other words, much like Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines, Trump casinos, Trump University and other Trump products, the public soon surmised they didn’t want the junk that he was selling.

But this embarrassing track record of failure has not slowed Trump’s plan to slap his name on other Washington buildings, new Navy warships, a government-operated prescription drug site and a visa program for rich foreigners. We can be sure that if Trump were to get his billionaires’ ballroom built before his fingers have been pried from the levers of power, he will try to affix his name to that corrupt and illegal undertaking.

Can we agree that this convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, likely child rapist (see the Epstein files), virulent racist, anti-democratic authoritarian, supporter of murderous federal agents, sadistic insurrectionist and the most corrupt exploiter of our nation’s highest office should not have his name attached to any public building once our beloved country is rid of him?

To be fair, it might be appropriate to put his name on a prison. Or convert Mar-a-Lago into the Donald Trump Museum of Crime. Or attach a gold Donald Trump plaque on any number of public urinals. Any of these strike me as appropriate ways to document his legacy. Perhaps you have other suggestions.

It is my hope, once we are done with this evil figure forever, that the name Donald J. Trump will long endure as a warning. This name should long survive as a chilling reminder of what happens when a free, but inadequately educated people sacrifice their liberty and their dignity to bow down to an unprincipled and racist demagogue whose only real desire is to feed his vanity, expand his power, enrich himself and his family, and pursue a regressive, white supremacist future.

There’s no doubt that other changes are more urgent. We must hold his whole crew of miscreants criminally accountable for their violations of our laws. Once back in power, Democratic lawmakers should get right to work rethinking and resetting our laws to protect us from this kind of despotic exploitation of our democratic system. There will be plenty of labor—likely for decades—to both rebuild broken institutions and rebuild the trust that this man and his regime have shattered at home and abroad.

But one grave consequence of this Trump era has been the degradation of the truth, a methodical process pursued to undermine the public’s capacity to know what’s true and what’s false, thereby enhancing the power of the man who told his followers to simply believe in him and what he says. Much like maintaining statues of Confederate leaders who supported slavery and seceded from the union, allowing the name Donald Trump to endure in our public squares will sustain the lie that he was something other than a traitorous fraud and an enemy of the Constitution and the very notion of a United States of America.

Super Bowl Addendum: I hope you caught the music yesterday, both the opening by Brandi Carlile and the halftime party from Bad Bunny. Carlile sang a moving rendition of “America the Beautiful.” It brought back memories of being inspired by my country without a tyrant trying to destroy it. (Watch it here.)

And Bad Bunny filled San Francisco’s Levi’s stadium with joy and Puerto Rican spirit. The words he sang were Spanish, but the feelings were universal. And for those who needed to get the message, the stadium’s billboard said, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.” The words on the football Bad Bunny held up to the camera at the end: “Together We Are America.”

Right on.

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