Trump gets no respect, Rodney Dangerfield of Presidents
Trump has had dozens of things named after him and nearly all were named by him and for him, from steaks and wines; to Trumptini, a Bacardi-based cocktail; Trump: The Game; Donald Trump’s Real Estate Tycoon — a 2002 video game by RedCap; and of course casinos, hotels and golf courses, many that have failed, gone bankrupt or otherwise were colossal losers.
I imagine there may one be a trump presidential library one day that could fit nicely in a Port-A-John.
Generally speaking the man gets no respect as he hasn’t been honored very often by anyone other than himself. But last week, the Lyon County (Nevada) Board of County Commissioners renamed its county justice complex in Yerington as the Donald J. Trump Justice Complex. Around 50 people attended the dedication although trump estimated the crowd in the thousands. In July, the same commissioners voted to rename a county road “Pres. Trump Way.” Yerington is not exactly a thriving metropolis, its population was a teensey 3,048 at the 2010 census.
There’s also a Trump Drive in Kalispell, Flathead County, Mont., population 24,558.
On the day of President Biden’s inauguration, Anthony Sabatini, a Republican state representative, announced a plan to rename U.S. Route 27 as President Donald J. Trump Highway, stretching past the undrained, Everglades swamps and its poisonous snakes and alligators and ending at a historically black neighborhood in Miami. The plan is in limbo as even Republican legislators in Florida have not gotten behind the proposal.
In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed legislation that will rename as President Donald J. Trump Highway a 20-mile stretch of U.S. 287 from Boise City to the Oklahoma-Texas border in Cimarron County. The legislation was temporarily tabled because Oklahoma state law notes a person must be dead for at least three years before a highway or bridge can be named in their honor. The only exception is for Medal of Honor recipients. Not letting law or tradition in their way, the majority Republicans voted for the new highway name.
There’s Donald J. Trump State Park, in New York state, located on land donated by trump in 2006 with the typically, self-aggrandizing, and Narcissean caveat that the property be named after him. Maintenance of the park was halted in 2010 due to budget constraints, and the park remains largely undeveloped. Most of the buildings have been demolished; only a few foundations and the existing tennis court remain. There have been several calls to rename the park.
That’s about it for trump honors in the U.S.
Abroad, there’s Trump Avenue in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; Donald J. Trump Boulevard in Kamëz, Albania; Donald Trump Square in Jerusalem, Israel, named after his administration recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that was rejected by a majority of world leaders. And as a move at further deification, the square in Petah Tikva, in central Israel was renamed Donald Trump Square.
Apart from a few stretches of remote highways, a species of micro-moth was named Neopalpa donaldtrumpi. The moth is found in Caifornia and Mexico and was discovered by Irania-Canadian scientist Vazrick Nazari who gave it the name because of the moth’s distinctive yellowish-white scales covering the head, reminiscent of trump’s hair.
Tetragramma donaldtrumpi, a species of fossil sea urchin, was discovered in 2016 by William R. Thompson, Jr. who dubbed it after trump, then a Republican presidential nominee. The specimen was from the Lower Cretaceous, Trinity Group, of the Glen Rose Formation near Fischer, Texas. , and is known to have been about 1 inch (2.5 cm) in size and round in shape, with the appearance of a Life Savers candy.
And last, there’s Dermophis donaldtrumpi, a proposed title for a new blind species of amphibian. It was originally discovered in Panama and is yet to be confirmed as a new species. EnvirBuild won an auction to name the species and christened it trump as a protest against Trump’s environmental policies and views.
Pretty thin list. Eat your heart out trump. For comparison, President Obama has 14 species named after him, including a wafer trapdoor spider and a Cuban bee; 22 schools and 17 streets in the U.S; and streets in Spain, and Tanzania. Obama Day also is a Kenyan holiday honoring Obama’s election and Barack Obama Day, was named a state holiday in Illinois.
President Joe Biden has been in office for a bit over a year and has three institutions bearing his name, including the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware and the Joseph R. Biden Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration, also at the University of Delaware; and the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania. Three facilities are named after Biden in Delaware including a welcome center, a pool and a rail station and three streets; and an ice cream flavor, “Big Red, White and Biden” produced by Cornell Dairy; while a planet, “minor planet 2012 VP113,” was named Biden in 2014.
There could be contests for each year’s biggest losers to be awarded the ignominious “Bad Hair Trophy,” in Trump’s honor. Certainly, among the winners would be the Ford Edsel, a car marketed in the 1950s that was later deemed a monumental failure, that was considered overhyped, unattractive and low quality and lost more than $250 million before it was discontinued in 1960. Sounds very trumpian.
RMS Titanic is another certain trump honoree. The Titanic, of course, was the British passenger liner which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912 after striking an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 passengers and crew.
Another sure honoree would be the mining disaster of 1966 at the Aberfan Colliery Slip in the Welsh Valleys village of Aberfan. That October, the village was hit by more than six inches of rainfall, causing a vast quantity of saturated debris to break free from the pile as it traveled towards the village at speeds between 11 and 21 miles-per-hour and in waves up to 30 feet. The avalanche claimed the lives of 144 people, surely of trumpian proportions.
Many other man made disasters would qualify to be trumped, like the Chernobyl meltdown, Montana asbestos clouds, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Bhopal disaster, the Sidoarjo mud volcano, the North Pacific Garbage Patch and many more.
Trump’s name could be plastered on a statue to honor the worst athletes, like Michael Haddix, a fullback with the National Football League, who averaged 3.0 yards per carry in his brief, unspectacular career; and Priest Lauderdale, who at 7-feet-4 was deemed the worst first round NBA pick.
The worst inventions could be trumped and would range from the Segway, a nifty piece of technology that went nowhere; to crinoline, a corset relic of the Victorian era, that was so large it made walking through doors nearly impossible; and Vio, Coke’s brainstorm of carbonated, flavored mile, which rolled out in 2009, and quickly dissipated from view.