Mary Ellen Klas
Travellers to Florida take note. Palm Beach International Airport will soon be renamed the President Donald J. Trump International Airport, complete with new call letters: DJT. When the name change takes effect in July, it will not only be the first time an airport will be named after a sitting president, but the first time such an arrangement can create new revenue streams for him and his family. And Americans will be paying for it – and not only in taxes.
Trump has a tradition of using government infrastructure as a public affirmation of his grasp on power. In his second term, he has already put his name on government buildings, monuments, currency and public initiatives.
Most Americans have brushed off this habit as clever marketing or a harmless ego trip, but there is something more insidious at work here — which is why it’s a tactic that autocrats have used for centuries.
“The leader must be everywhere, his face must be everywhere, his name must be everywhere, and his aesthetic, his taste must be reflected in buildings, in the people around him,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at NYU told NPR. “The autocrat wants to remake the world in his own image.”
The logic is this: If Trump is America, then his corrupt self-dealing is also American. If Trump is America’s forever leader, then the patriotic thing for elected officials is to do what he says. Omnipresence becomes omnipotence.
Several other presidents have had government structures named after them, but none had been in office when the designation happened, none had licensing deals, and most were already dead.
But Palm Beach County commissioners were given a hard choice. Florida state Representative Meg Weinberger, a Palm Beach Gardens Republican, quietly sponsored the bill to rename the airport in January. It was carefully crafted to make sure the Democrat-dominated county commission could not interfere. If the commissioners refused to go along, the bill said, they could lose their state transportation funds.
Then, in February, Trump’s family filed to trademark the use of the president’s name on airports, putting the county in jeopardy of a lawsuit unless it signed onto a licensing deal. The Republican-controlled state legislature passed the bill along party lines. Governor Ron DeSantis signed it into law in March.
The cost to Florida taxpayers to change signs, update logos and reprogram systems: at least $US5.5 million ($7.7 million).
After the name change was approved, the state legislators gave the county $US2.75 million for the name change costs and the Federal Aviation Administration gave the county a $US10 million grant to make “family-friendly” upgrades to the airport, more than it gave airports three times its size. It’s possible that federal cash will help offset what the state didn’t cover.
The final licensing agreement suggests that the Trump family won’t profit from branded merchandise sold at the airport but, trademark experts told the New York Times, the family could profit if the merchandise is sold outside the airport’s premises. The deal also requires airport stores to buy branded merchandise only from Trump’s approved retailers and gives his company control over who manufactures those products.
County officials gave the seven-member commission a single day to evaluate the 35-page licensing agreement and approve it or risk financial and legal jeopardy. Commissioners acknowledged that the legislature had tied their hands. Three of them, all Democrats, suggested they needed more time to truly evaluate the unusual agreement and voted against it.
Democrat Maria Sachs was the deciding vote in favour of the licensing agreement. “The decision that I made was a legal decision,” she told me. “If litigation would occur, it could close the airport.”
While the Palm Beach County commission couldn’t change the law, the commissioners could have spoken up about the legislative abuse of power that forced them to accept the renaming decision. And if the airport closed? Perhaps the closure would have drawn attention to the corrupt deal — including from the powerful financiers and tech titans who have relocated to South Florida to be close to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion, a private club he has turned into the “winter White House.”
Defenders of the name change claim Trump’s influence in South Florida has helped the county by attracting such wealthy influence-peddlers. But Palm Beach County has suffered along with the rest of America during Trump’s second term. His mass deportations have thinned the workforce in the county’s most robust industries; his tax cuts for the wealthy have left thousands more people in the county without health insurance; and one out of 13 county residents face food insecurity.
The Democrats on the county commission asked important questions about honouring Trump by renaming the airport, but silenced their criticism. That conveyed a message: They were subservient to Trump. I pointed this out to Sachs, a lawyer and former state legislator. She agreed that perhaps they ought to speak up and direct their focus to constituents beyond the president. “We need to make sure that our food pantries are full,” she told me.
It shouldn’t take naming a food pantry after Trump to get the funds to do it. Then again, since he can take credit for increasing demand, it may be the one place where his branding is appropriate.
Bloomberg
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