Letters from an American - February 16, 2026

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

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February 16, 26. On February 13th and 14th, President Donald J. Trump's representatives filed three applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark his name for future use on an airport. As trademark lawyer Josh Gerben of GERBIN IP noted, the application also covers merchandise,

branded President Donald J. Trump International Airport, Donald J. Trump International Airport, and DJT, including clothing, handbags, luggage, jewelry, watches, and tie clips. Because of the trademark filing, Gerben notes, any airport adopting the Trump name would have to get a license to use the name, potentially paying a licensing fee. Gerben emphasizes that while it is common for public officials to have landmarks named after them, never in the history of the United States has a sitting president's private company sought trademark rights before such a naming. In October, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vote withheld billions of dollars Congress appropriated for a tunnel between New York and New Jersey under the Hudson River, saying he wanted to be able to. wanted to ensure funding is not flowing based on unconstitutional DEI principles. Trump told Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat of New York,

that he would release the funds if Schumer would agree to name Dulles Airport outside Washington, D.C., and New York City's Penn Station, after him. After a Florida state lawmaker proposed putting Trump's name on the Palm Beach International Airport, Jason Garcia of seeking rents today reported that the Florida legislature is currently pushing through measures to change the name of that airport to the Donald J. Trump International Airport. The amount of money proposed in Florida's budget to make the change is $2,750,000 but Garcia notes this is likely a placeholder. The budget request is for 5.5 million. The

Trump grab for an airport named after him is just the latest grift in a presidential term that experts so far estimate has enriched the Trump family by at least $4 billion. That windfall includes merch, political contributions, and multiple cryptocurrency deals that have led, for example, to Sheikh Tanun bin Zayed al-Nayyad al-Nayan, who manages the United Arab Emirates sovereign wealth fund, buying a 49% stake in the Trump family's World Liberty Financial crypto company for $500 million days before Trump took office. This deal put $187 million immediately into Trump family entities and at least $31 million into entities owned by the family of Steve Whitkoff, whom Trump had just named his Middle East envoy. President Trump only acts in the best interests of the American public, which is why they overwhelmingly re-elected him to this office despite years of lies and false accusations against him and his businesses from the fake news media.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said of the UAE deal. President Trump's assets are in a trust managed by his children. There are no conflicts of interest. Earlier this month, Trump, his son's Don Jr. and Eric and the Trump organization sued the Internal Revenue Service, or the IRS, and the Treasury Department for $10 billion in damages after an IRS contractor during Trump's own first term was convicted of leaking their tax information, along with that of thousands of other Americans who are not suing to news outlets. Trump has control over the IRS, and Treasury Secretary Scott Besant says he will write whatever check he is told to cut. This move advances Trump's use of the presidency to enrich himself into the realm of autocratic rulers who move their country's money to their own accounts. In 1789, when George Washington took the oath of office as the first president of the United States of America, no one knew what to expect of leaders in a Democratic Republic.

Washington understood that anything he did would become the standard for anyone who came after him. I walk on untrodden ground, he wrote in 1790, the year after he assumed the office of the presidency. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent. After watching colonial lawmakers under royal rule demand payoffs before they would approve popular measures, Washington rejected the idea of profiting from the presidency. In his short inaugural address, he took the time to state explicitly that he would not accept any payments while in the presidency, except for an official salary appropriated by Congress. Washington noted that the support of the American people for the new government was key to its survival.

He hailed the pledges of the new nation's lawmakers to rule for the good of the whole nation, not for specific regions or partisan groups. He also predicted that the power of the government would come not from military might, but from its determination to serve the needs of the public. He promised that the foundation of the foundation of the government. of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of a free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world. Washington put a hopeful spin on

human nature to launch the institution of the presidency, but the framers had no illusions. They constructed the Constitution to pit men's ambitions against each other, so no individual could gain enough power to become a tyrant. Later, the rise of formal political parties in the 1830s guaranteed hawkish oversight of those in power by those out of it, exposing corruption or personal vices before those exhibiting them made it to the height of the government. As recently as the 1970s, those systems held strongly enough that Republican senators warned Republican President Richard M. Nixon that the House was about to impeach him for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress for his actions during and after the Watergate break in, during which operatives

tried to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. And they told him, when the House impeached, the Senate, including Senate Republicans, would convict. They urged him to resign, which he did on August 8, 1974, the only president so far to resign the office of the presidency. Since then, Republicans have fallen into the trap Washington warned against in his farewell address, putting party over country. Such partisanship, he said, would distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration, agitate the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindle the animosity of one part against another, foment occasionally riot and insurrection,

and open the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government through the channels of party passion. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will. of another. Fierce partisanship would lead partisans to seek absolute power through an individual who turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation on the ruins of public liberty, Washington warned. And, as Washington predicted, today's Republicans have replaced the

prerogatives of Congress with loyalty to Trump. They have also ignored the vital to Trump. They have also ignored the vices of Trump and his loyalists. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, explained to a podcaster on February 12th why he doesn't worry about COVID. I'm not scared of a germ, he said. I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats. Jonathan Landay and Douglas Gillison of Reuters reported yesterday that Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vote took $15 million in unlawful. unlawfully impounded money that Congress had appropriated for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which fed starving children for his own security detail.

Michelle Hackman, Josh Dawsey, and Tarini Party of the Wall Street Journal reported that Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem and her affair partner Corey Lewandowski travel in a $70 million luxury 737 max jet with a private cabb. in the back. Overall are the horrors of the Epstein files, in which Trump's name appears so often, observers have suggested it is the one place that could legitimately be rebranded with Trump's name

as the Trump Epstein files. And so, Washington's dire warnings have come true. Profiting office name is only part of why Trump appears to want to splash it anywhere he can. So far, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a new class of battleships, and perhaps the President Donald J. Trump Ballroom,

where the East Wing of the White House used to be. It's also about his legacy. In a tour of George Washington's Virginia home, Mount Vernon, in April 2019, Trump expressed surprise that the first president hadn't named any of his property after himself. If he was smart, he would have put his name on it, Trump said. You got to put your name on stuff or no one remembers you.

In fact, Americans remember and revere Washington because of his reluctance to promote himself, not in spite of it. John Trumbull's portrait of him resigning his wartime commission after negotiators had signed the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War, hangs in the U.S. Capitol as a moment that defined the United States, a leader voluntarily giving up power rather than becoming a dictator. Then, when voters made him president of the new United States in 1789, he refused a second time to become a king, emphasizing that he was the servant of the people. And then, after two terms, voluntarily handing power to a successor to, chosen not by him, but by the people.

As Washington predicted, the President's Americans revered, despite their faults, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt are those who use the enormous power of the US government not for their own aggrandizement, but to secure and expand the rights and the prosperity of the American people. Trump has made no secret of wanting his image carved onto Mount Rushmore in South Dakota,

where sculptor Goetzen Borglam carved the busts of President's George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln in the Black Hills of the Lakotas. Beginning his sculpture in 1927, Borglam chose President Washington because he had founded the nation, Jefferson because he had launched westward expansion, Lincoln because he had saved the United States from destruction, and Roosevelt because he had protected working men and helped fit democracy to industrial development. But Trump's interest in being added to Mount Rushmore does not appear to... But Trump's interest in being added to Mount Rushmore

does not appear to be related to a desire to advance the interests of the American people. In September 2025, the IRS granted tax-exempt status to the Donald Trump Mount Rushmore Memorial Legacy, making it a charity that can accept tax-free donations. Happy President's Day, 2026. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts, recorded, with music composed by Michael Moss.