Bulwark Takes - EXCLUSIVE: Trump Is Sticking His Face On YOUR Passport

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

Sam Stein and Ben Parker break down a Bulwark exclusive that the State Department is putting Trump's face on U.S. passports, as part of "America 250." Sam and Ben walk through what the redesign would actually include, why it’s unprecedented, and how it fits into a broader pattern of Trump branding across federal symbols and institutions. Plus, they break down how we reached out to the White House and State Department for comment and gave them time to respond. Instead, the White House sent the story to Fox News.For a limited time, listeners can get an exclusive $25 off AuraFrame's best-selling Carver Matframe at https://on.auraframes.com/BULWARKTAKES with code BULWARKTAKES.Read Ben Parker's exclusive report on the new passport design: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/exclusive-state-dept-finalizing-planSubscribe to the Morning Shots newsletter: https://www.thebulwark.com/s/morningshotsTickets for our Bulwark Live shows in San Diego and Los Angeles in May: https://thebulwark.com/eventsHave a tip? We have a secure website for that! https://thebulwark.com/tips

Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing out of the bulwark. I'm joined by Ben Parker, who is... Hey, Sam. How do I even want to describe you, like a Swiss Army knife of the bulwark? Wow, thank you. Managerial capacity. Reporter extraordinaire today, for those who are joining us. A reporter, occasionaire, yeah.

Okay, fine, whatever. Ben's got a hot scoop that we're going to be talking about. It is Donald Trump putting his name and face on something new. This time, your U.S. passport. If you're getting a new U.S. passport or a renewed U.S. passport, congratulations. You're going to get one with Trump's face on it. Before we do that and before we dive into it, a sort of programming, remind forever on who is watching. We got live shows coming up May 20th, May 21st out in San Diego and Los Angeles.

Tickets are hot. You got to get them. Go to bulwark, the bulwark.com slash events for tickets. If you're out in the area, I definitely would attend. All right, Ben, let's talk about this thing because I'll kind of pull. pull back the curtain a little bit. We were working on this for like a couple weeks, right? Like we got the tip, like, I forget how long ago the tip came in.

Yeah, so we got, we had obviously two sources on this story, good journalistic etiquette, right? First one came in a while ago. So we've been kind of waiting on to see if someone else could confirm this for us. That happened pretty quickly. And yeah, you and I've been working on this story. Sort of last night this morning kicking it around, seeing, you know, seeing if we can make it work. All right.

And before we get to the drama, because there's actually like real, like, insidery drama about how the White House and the administration handled this when we went to them for comment. We'll save that as sort of the dessert for this. Let's talk about the substance here. So what is the actual redesign? The redesign is of the inside cover of the passport. So this is where normally you get classic sort of patriotic Americana stuff.

Right now, if you look, open up your passport, the inside cover has Francis Scott Key and the Star-Spangled banner and the back cover has the Voyager spacecraft. The new design, which the State Department says is in honor of the 250th anniversary of American independence is going to have Donald Trump's face. Specifically, it's going to have that like one eye cocked scowling portrait he took right when he was inaugurated. You got that old Trump.

How do you, how do you describe the face? Like the scowly, you know, it's a laud the mugshot he took, right? Like it is the same face. A little bit. A famous Atlanta mugshot. Yeah. So that's going to be on the passport, along with his signature in what else? Gold.

I mean, not actual gold. Like gold color. Yeah. Okay. Why are they doing this? Their reason is to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America. And I guess the way they want to celebrate it is by replacing, you know, just general patriotic stuff about America with stuff specifically about Donald Trump, which has, as far as we can

tell, never been done before. Yeah, we were looking into this. We're trying to figure out if there's ever been a case where a president sitting has put his face on a passport. And as far as, I mean, it's, we asked Adam Kuiper, who knows. all of this shit and Adam couldn't recall. But we did reach out to some historians and we couldn't find a case of this, right? Yeah. It's so the modern, I mean, passports go back hundreds of years and like these two pieces of paper that said, let this person pass, whatever. And they would have the

signature of the person issuing it, which in this case is actually not the president. It's the Secretary of State or it's the State Department. So it doesn't need to have Trump's signature at all. But it's, it apparently has not happened in modern history, if ever, that a sitting U.S. president had their image in the passport because there's no reason. for it. And apparently is not a thing that has happened like in the world. Like it is not a thing countries do that they put images of their leaders in the passport. It's just not, it's like this is a new thing. It's, it's the guy, the historian I talked to called it wacky. Okay. Yeah. Well, it's new with respect to passports, but it's now become sort of old hat for Trump. I'm just going to go

through a few things that have been put in with his image on it. There's, and this is just for now, these two are for the 250th anniversary celebration. We're getting a conscious. We're going to a controversial $1 coin with his face on it. We're going to, it's going to be as large as possible, as was said in the release. The National Park Service is going to have park passes with Trump's face on it again for the 250th celebration. That's just for the celebration. This is in your piece as well. Donald Trump's signature is set to appear on future U.S. currency. Huge banners with his face have appeared on federal buildings. He's created a new website for a prescription drugs called TrumpRX. He's announced a new Trump class of battleships, and his name has been placed on both the U.S.

Institute of Peace and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. He's also introduced the Trump Gold Card and the Trump Platinum card for people willing to shell out $1 million or $5 million for sort of green card status here. And then, of course, the one big, beautiful bill, which Trump signed into law, had the creation of a new type of custodial IRA accounts that were dubbed Trump accounts. I don't think we're missing anything, but it's possible. We are. I just thought of one. Oh, damn. What do we miss?

Yeah, so I just thought of it. Do you remember back during COVID in his first term? He made sure that all the stimulus checks had his signature on them? Yes, I do remember. So people got the checks and they said Donald Trump, even though, like all the rest of the things, they didn't actually need to have his signature. He made sure had the big Sharpie on it. So I might call this narcissism.

Some might call this insecurity. Where do you come down in the psychological spectrum here? You know, I think there is a, there's a even more nefarious explanation, which it could be all the above. You actually pointed this out to me as we were working on this piece. Donald Trump is also a big proponent of the Save America Act, also called the Save Act. It goes by a bunch of different names. There's a bunch of different versions. One of the things it would do is require people to prove their citizenship before they can vote.

And one of the ways you can do that is with a passport. So right now, most Americans would have a passport. But if this act passes, you're going to have a lot more people getting passports. looking at Trump's face right when they go to the ballot box. Coincidence. It might be coincidence. I don't know. Here's the future for Americans, okay?

You want to vote. You got to go get a passport. So you take the money from your Trump account, which you filled with your Trump stimulus check. And you're here on greed card status because you purchased a Trump platinum card, but you need a little extra cash. So you take it out of your Trump account that you fill with your Trump stimulus check, that you go down to the reconverted John F. Kennedy Memorial Center or the Trump

John F. Kennedy-Morris Center, which has been reconverted into a passport distribution center. And you use that money to buy your passport, which has Donald Trump's face on it, so that you can go and vote. That's how it's going to be in a future America. Trumpified. And then you go get your cup of coffee and you leave a tip and you're enormously large $1. Trump coin as big as possible. It's that thick. Thunk.

Yeah. And then by the way, because you have an ulcer from all this and you need medication, you got to go get it on the Trump virus. Folks, this is the dystopian future that we're in. All right, so let's get to the weird process here. So this one enraged me, and I don't get that ragey all the time. Bullard takes a sponsored by Aura Frames. Look, Mother's Day is coming up, and this is the last holiday where you want to get caught

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For limited time, listeners can get $25 off their best-selling Carver mat frame with code bulwark takes. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com. promo code, bulwark takes. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. In terms and conditions do apply. We went to the White House this morning. So just, again, pulling back the current here, I don't know. People probably don't care about the process here, but I'm going to make the case why it matters. Real quick, just before you tell the story, we are recording this the day this story came out. It is April 28th. The story is just published like a couple hours ago. So this all happened today. Okay. So go ahead. Like, not Like a cut like we're talking to happen like an hour and a half ago.

Maybe less. I'm like still getting off the high of it. We were originally going to put this in a little quick hits for for morning shots. And I was like, Ben, did we reach out to the White House for comment? Did we reach out to the State Department for comment for this? And we had not. And so I was like, look, we got to do it. That's just what you do.

You need to give them the right to comment. So we held this thing. We could have gone. We had it. But I made the call to say we have to hold this thing so they get the charge. so they get the chance to comment. I thought that was a gracious and professional thing to do, and that's really what you should do in this business.

So then you went to them to comment, roughly around what time? About 10.30 this morning, a little later for the White House because they had to get us the right email address, whatever. But yeah, it was this morning. It was before noon for both. We gave them two hours, which is an acceptable amount of time. It wasn't too short. Well, it certainly wasn't too long, but it wasn't too short either.

And then when did they get back to you? The White House got back to me just before 1 p.m. Just before 1 p.m. they responded. Well, before that, though, they said we needed more time. Sorry, when did the State Department get back to? Yeah, the State Department got back to me earlier than that. Earlier in that, like early afternoon, late mornings, I'm like, we're on noonish. And they said, can we have a little more time?

We're looking into it. But they said, you know, off the record, can we have more time? Okay. So you come to me and a couple of letters here, and we're sort of like, well, what do we do? And I was like, well, let's give them a couple more hours. But let's get it ready just in case they tried to rush us or front load us, which by that, I mean they're going to give it to a different publication to get it out before we could do it. And Martin Wendell Jones was like, we should probably publish this thing because they're going to try to do that.

And I said, yeah, they probably will, which is why we've got to get ready to go. And so then we're tinkering with it. We're editing it. We have a process in place for fact-checking. We're doing the responsible thing. And giving them a couple more hours, I thought was a nice, gracious thing to do. We didn't have to do it. We felt really confident about the story already.

Give them to more hours. I'm sitting in my office. Ben comes by and what do you say? They gave it to Fox. They gave it to fucking Fox News. But wait a minute. But that's not even it. I mean, should we talk about

what that original Fox story was? Yeah, let's not tell about the blood-boiling part. The original Fox story was like four graphs, but go ahead. It was like four words. It was nothing. So the White House gets back. And I mean, they're really just like abusing all the journalists they're going to say

on background. here's a link to this Fox News story that we clearly just planted. And the Fox news story is like the State Department's going to redesign the passport. It doesn't say they're going to put Trump's image in it. It doesn't say what image it is. It doesn't say this is like unprecedented and never been done it for. It's just like

the redesign of the passport and Fox has exclusive. So it's like, hey, thanks for giving us more time. Thanks to giving us a heads up and a chance to comment. Go F yourself is basically what they said. Pretty much. And this is why I know this all seems so, who cares, it's insider baseball. But this is why this shit happens. All right. Every time that the White House complains about reporters not giving them

enough time to respond to a story, it's because of this bullshit, because they're going to fuck you over if you do give them time. And so all their complaints are hollow. It's just true. And if they want to build up trust with anyone covering them, they shouldn't do this JV Bushley crap where they give it to an outlet that they know is going to take a spoon-fed story and rush it up and not be critical at all about them. Because the next time we go to the White House for comment, we'll give them some time. But we're not going to give them two hours. And we're not going to acquiesce to the request for an additional couple hours to track something down because we now have evidence that they're just going to abuse that trust. So congrats to the White House aide who came up with this great

scheme. You drew more attention to our story. I appreciate that. You allowed us to understand how the process works on your end. I appreciate that. There's more transparency for us. But you just burnt whatever trust we had. So it's dumb. It was stupid and you need to do it. And anyway, we're getting more attention anyway for it. So thank you. And you know, here's the thing is this is a thing they are doing. It is a thing, you know, as I said, we first heard about this months ago, I think. Was that a first or initial source of that many? It's maybe a month ago, yeah. Maybe I'm thinking, okay, fine. We heard about this a while ago.

Yeah. We've been on the lookout for it. So this is a thing they have been working on for a while. It is a thing they are planning on rolling out. It is not secret. Like these are going to be in passports that are going to be in people's hands and use it all over the world. Right. They should be proud of it, right?

We come to them. We say, like, you're going to do this. Do you want to comment? They shouldn't be like, you know, like, they should just give us a comment. Like, be own your thing, right? Like, this is your idea. It's your idea. It's your idea.

It's your idea. Own it. Talk to us about it. Don't like sneak out and be like, oh, now we got to like, you know, it's not like a, it's, this like national security information, you know? I know. We're not endangering some mission. No, not at all.

And then like the fact that Fox wanted originally published this like BS story, they were clearly more interested in helping the White House screw us and they weren't reporting the story because there was no news in their story until they went back and updated it later. I mean, I would say maybe charitably to Fox. They didn't know that we were on the story and they just got a handout and they're like, cool. But do the people at Fox should also realize that that's kind of embarrassing for them because they just take handouts? By the way, for folks who are watching this and who want to reward good behavior, we have a tips line that you can send your stuff to if you have good tips about stuff like this. Like what else is he putting his face on?

What else is he doing at the State Department? What kind of directives are going around? Especially if you're at the Justice Department these days. There's so much shit happening there. And you want to give us some good tips that we can chase down and we'll do it ethically and responsibly. but we're not going to, you know, swallow bullshit from the administration. It's the bulwark.com slash tips. The bulwark.com slash tips, it's a secure tips line.

Hit us up if you have anything else to say. All right, Ben, any last thoughts before we call it today? Yeah, you mentioned our morning newsletter, morning chats. People aren't getting that. It's free. It's great. This is the kind of thing before it really blew up. This is the kind of thing.

It was just going to be another morning shots piece. It's full of stuff like this all the time. Little updates, fresh takes on the news. People should definitely subscribe if they haven't. All right. To recap, go to our live shows. make sure anything at the 21st. Hit up our tips line, the bulwark.com slash tips and read warning shots, which is a go-to morning newsletter. It's awesome. Bill, Andrew Eager, edited by Ben. It's fantastic.

All right, everyone, thanks so much for turning into this bulwark takes. Appreciate it. Talk to you guys later.