Some graffiti vandals spray walls with paint from cans. Trump spreads his name with gold plated signs on buildings. Trump’s need to rename places, programs and institutions by inserting his own name is not simply petty but revelatory of deep-seated insecurity. No, he’s not a graffiti artist adding value to an urban landscape. He’s a graffiti vandal subtracting value by trying to erase and replace the accomplishments of others. Like the military crime of “stolen valor,” Trump tries to steal the legacies of his superiors.

He is no John Kennedy but feels ok with renaming the Kennedy Center the Kennedy Trump Center. He’s now floating making it the Trump Kennedy Center. He began this misappropriation by renaming the Kennedy Center Opera House the First Lady Melania Trump Opera House.

His ego and insecurity demand that if he can’t build it, tear it down. If he can’t tear it down, remodel it in the form of his own taste and tastelessness. A $200 million makeover of the Kennedy center with marble and gold is a part of his cultural misappropriation. He has even redesigned the awards with bigger medals.

His unilateral destruction of the East Wing of OUR White House without reviews or permits is another example of trying to replace the accomplishments of others with his own grandiose fantasies. He will build a ballroom, bigger and gaudier than even Mar-a-Lago’s. His plan started at 90,000 square feet with a seated capacity of 650 and costing at $200 million. It has grown, at least in his head, into a 1,000-person capacity costing $300 million. Bigger is better. Size matters to Trump—always.

So much does he desire the Noble Peace prize, that he gleefully accepts a completely made-up FIFA Peace Prize, created just for him to feed the bottomless pit of his ego. He doesn’t care when he knows that the kowtowing counterfeit. As long as he can see it or hear it, it counts. When he believes it’s sincere, he glows. When he knows it’s false, he can take pleasure in making the powerful demonstrate their fealty by submitting to his needs.

For years he had his face planted on phony Time Magazine covers. He knew it was a lie—or to him, perhaps only puffery. He kept doing it. He doesn’t hide his deceptions but brazenly doubles down till, by force of repetition, they become perceived reality. He awarded himself for being the best golfer at his own golf clubs. Another clear fraud. His fidelity to truth is like his fidelity to wives. Nonexistent.

Any towers he builds, he names after himself. However, many of Trump Towers were built by others, and he only licenses his name. This is an actual accomplishment. He doesn’t have to pay for his name to go on buildings as product placement. He gets them to pay him! Then, of course, he claims them as his own.

Trump’s Oedifice Complex is less about building than trying to own real brick and mortar with gold plated signage featuring his name. This is sad, even pathetic. He’s like a dog marking territory with gold-colored urine to make it his. It doesn’t. Innumerable soldiers in WWII wrote, “Kilroy was here.” They marked the walls as proof that they had lived and their lives mattered. It did not and does not confer the immortality they sought.

Trump clearly does believe one thing sincerely. He believes in the power of naming. He used his executive powers to try to rename The Gulf of Mexico as The Gulf of America. Well, there is a gulf between his ambitions and reality. Most of the world, did not go along. He renamed Denali Park back to Mount McKinley, defending the old Anglo name and eliminating the indigenous one. He also has renamed seven military bases, returning them to their previous Confederate identities.
Perhaps Trump’s ultimate act of Chutzpah, so far, is naming the Institute for Peace, that he tried to eliminate, the Trump Institute of Peace. With all of these transparently desperate reaches to achieve immortality by words and not deeds, Trump cements his legacy as a thin-skinned fraudster and failure.

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