On the Personality Cult of Donald J. Trump
For all its deep-running flaws, the American political system has, for more than two centuries, largely avoided the trappings of personality cults. Contemporary American popular culture is heavily shaped by the preferences and endorsements of celebrities and influencers. But the nation’s political institutions have historically incorporated legal and structural safeguards designed to prevent any single individual from achieving sustained sociopolitical omnipresence.
Even the most prominent, flamboyant, and impactful American presidents – including Andrew Jackson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan – largely eschewed a brand that transcended the traditional boundaries of American politics. The political career of Donald J. Trump is a complete reversal of it.
Throughout the course of his political career, Trump’s handlers and followers have fused magical thinking with religious mythology to manufacture his political image. That line now exerts cultural dominance in the United States (see: The Trump Delusion Intensifies: Messianism and God-building; MLRG.online, June 2024). In Trump’s current Presidency, his every whim is indulged, and his likeness is synonymous with the rule of capital itself.
Omnipresence of Name and Likeness
Trump’s public image has always been one of excess and egotism, from an endless parade of inferior “luxury” products and services bearing his name to a failed “university” and scores of buildings festooned with giant signs bearing his name. He has even proposed that his face should be added to Mount Rushmore, alongside the likes of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln. Trump’s unabashed pursuit of fame and power are the most stark and egregious manifestations of American decadence.
The Trumpist personality cult’s creeping intrusion into governmental institutions includes campaigns to put Trump’s face on American currency. Perhaps there is no greater path to omnipresence in American society than to be pictured on the “almighty dollar.” But it is both illegal and contrary to established tradition to use the image of a living leader on American currency:
“U.S. law forbids any living person to be depicted on currency notes, bonds or securities… Congress passed a law prohibiting it in 1866 after a portrait of the then-living Treasury official Spencer Clark on the 5-cent note caused a public outcry.”
Lalljee, Jason. “What to Know about the Trump $250 Bill Proposal.” Axios, 26 Feb. 2025.
But as time and again in the age of Trump, such standards and customs mean nothing to the cult.
In early 2025, South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson mounted a campaign to create a new $250 bill bearing Trump’s portrait. Political opponents and media outlets lampooned the effort, but Wilson and others were fully committed to the cause.
“ ‘Grateful to announce that I am drafting legislation to direct the Bureau of Graving and Printing to design a $250 bill featuring Donald J. Trump, Wilson wrote in a Tuesday post on X with a mock-up of the proposed bill.’
[…]
Despite the contradiction with federal law, Wilson said he wants to honor the president for his financial policies, drawing a contrast to the previous administration.
‘Bidenflation has destroyed the economy forcing American families to carry more cash. Most valuable bill for most valuable President,’ he wrote.” (emphasis added)
“South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson Proposes Trump $250 Bill.” The Hill, 27 Feb. 2025,
While Wilson’s campaign ultimately stalled, the Trumpites renewed their effort to place Trump’s face on money in October. They plan to exploit a loophole that may allow for his image to be used on coinage, as opposed to paper currency.
The Treasury Department is considering minting a $1 coin bearing President Donald Trump’s likeness on both sides to honor him and commemorate the United States’ 250th birthday next year.
A first draft of that coin, which will mark the semiquincentennial anniversary of the nation’s founding, depicts Trump’s head in profile on one side, above the words ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ and the dates 1776 and 2026.
The other side of the coin shows a defiant-looking Trump raising his fist, closely matching the pose he struck moments after surviving an assassination attempt at a 2024 presidential campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
The words ‘FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT,’ which Trump mouthed to his supporters right after that attack, appear around the edge of that side of the coin.
‘No fake news here. These first drafts honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUS are real,’ U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach wrote on X in response to a post touting sketches of the coin.”
Breuninger, Kevin. “Treasury Weighs Minting $1 Coin with Trump’s Face for U.S. 250th Anniversary.” CNBC, 3 Oct. 2025.
Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the effort.
“On Oct. 3, the White House reshared an X post from U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach confirming reports that the Trump administration was seeking to put the president’s image on the front and back of a dollar coin commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary.”
Jacobson, Louis. “Trump Wants His Face on a US Dollar Coin: History, Not Law, Stands in the Way.” Poynter, 9 Oct. 2025.
In a press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said:
“ ‘I’m not sure if he’s seen it, but I’m sure he’ll love it,’ Leavitt said.”
Jacobson, Louis. “Trump Wants His Face on a U.S. Dollar Coin: History, Not Law, Stands in the Way.” Poynter, 15 Dec. 2025.
On the Anniversary of His Birth
Since his reelection, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated a desire and intent to make his own birthday a cause of national celebration. The first expression materialized in June 2025 with Trump’s bombastic military parade in Washington, D.C.
“On June 14, President Donald Trump will celebrate his birthday by throwing a costly military parade in Washington, D.C. Estimates currently place the price tag for the event around $45 million, though the final cost could be much higher as the U.S. Army has committed to repairing any damage that the parade is likely to inflict on the streets of the nation’s capital.
Trump says that this parade is meant to celebrate 250 years of the Army, seemingly deflecting attention from the fact that he is organizing the parade on the date of his own birthday.”
McManus, Allison. “Trump Is Throwing Himself a Birthday Parade While Veterans and Military Families Face Cuts.” American Progress, 5 June 2025.
Trump has said the cost — projected to be as much as $45 million for the Army alone, not counting security and other expenses — will be ‘peanuts compared to the value of doing it.’
However, his critics argue the money could be better spent elsewhere.
‘If it was really about celebrating military families, we could put $30 million toward helping them offset the cost of their child care, food assistance and tuition,’ Sen. Tammy Duckworth said on X. ‘But it isn’t. Trump is throwing himself a $30 million birthday parade just to stroke his own ego.’ ”
Dec, Stacey. “Democrats Slam Military Parade as Trump’s Multimillion-Dollar ‘Birthday Party.’” ABC News, 12 June 2025.
Trump has since established his birthday as a “holiday” of sorts in the U.S. National Parks beginning next year. At the same time, he has eliminated established commemorations at these attractions, including those honoring civil rights leaders.
“The Trump administration has removed Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth from next year’s calendar of entrance fee-free days for national parks and added President Trump’s birthday to the list, according to the National Park Service, as the administration continues to push back against a reckoning of the country’s racist history on federal lands.
In addition to Trump’s birthday — which coincides with Flag Day (June 14) — the updated calendar of fee-free dates includes the 110th anniversary of the NPS (August 25), Constitution Day (September 17) and President Teddy Roosevelt’s birthday (October 27). The changes will take effect starting January 1.
[…]
The Department of the Interior, which oversees NPS, called the new fee-exempted dates ‘patriotic fee-free days,’ in an announcement that lauded the changes as ‘Trump’s commitment to making national parks more accessible, more affordable and more efficient for the American people.’ ”
Wise, Alana. “National Parks’ Fee-Free Calendar Drops MLK Day, Juneteenth and Adds Trump’s Birthday.” NPR, 6 Dec. 2025.
Trump is also planning yet another gaudy and ostentatious self-honoring event in 2026, this time in observance of his 80th birthday.
“The president has already revealed some of his grand plans for his 80th birthday next year, including hosting an Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the White House.
The event will be televised, and Trump will be joined by his friend, UFC CEO Dana White, for the telecast.”
Bouris, Catherine. “Trump Makes Weird Bid to Turn His Birthday Into a Holiday.” The Daily Beast, 5 Dec. 2025.
President Trump originally suggested 20,000 to 25,000 spectators for a proposed UFC event celebrating America’s 250th birthday. White’s updated estimates are far lower than what Trump proposed, citing security as a primary issue.
“The UFC card will likely take place on the South Lawn. It won’t accommodate tens of thousands of fans, but White hopes to accommodate them nearby.
‘There’s a park that’s connected to the White House,’ White said. ‘We could put 85,000 people over there with screens, and we’re going to put a big stage out there, do concerts.’
‘We’re going to take over Washington, DC, that whole week.’ ”
Mahjouri, Shakiel. “UFC CEO Dana White: Capacity Will Be Limited for Event at White House, but Has Plans for Fans to Attend Nearby.” CBS Sports, 11 Sept. 2025.
Institutionalization
On December 18, Trump’s hand-picked board of trustees at The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts voted “unanimously” to re-name the venue as the Trump-Kennedy Center:
“They did so ‘because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building,” [Press Secretary] Leavitt said.
‘Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future! The building will no doubt attain new levels of success and grandeur,’ she said.”
Breuninger, Kevin. “Kennedy Center to Be Renamed “Trump-Kennedy Center,” White House Says.” CNBC, 18 Dec. 2025.
As with the aforementioned efforts involving currency, this measure was undertaken in direct violation of current legislation.
“The move may face challenges, however: U.S. code states that no new ‘memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
To change that would require Congress, NBC News reported in July. House Republicans have already introduced at least one bill to rename the center in Trump’s honor.”
Breuninger, Kevin, ibid.
Trump and his enablers have also mounted an effort to re-write the histories of his predecessors via a series of newly installed plaques in the White House. Trump’s staff maintain that the president wrote the biographical notes himself.
“The plaques, many of which the White House said Trump penned himself, add to what the president has dubbed the ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’ – a portrait gallery along the West Wing Colonnade – and describe the tenures of former commanders in chief in an overtly political way.
Trump’s most recent predecessors’ plaques read the most editorialized. The permanent signs are stylistically similar to the president’s social media posts, with sporadic capitalizations and punctuation – including many exclamation points.
Under Biden, depicted only by his signature written by the presidential autopen, the plaque includes claims such as ‘Sleepy Joe Biden was, by far, the worst President in American History,’ adding that he took office ‘as a result of the most corrupt Election ever seen in the United States’ and that ‘Biden oversaw a series of unprecedented disasters that brought our Nation to the brink of destruction.’ ”
Scott, Rachel, et al. “Trump Hangs Plaques Mocking Biden, Obama along White House Colonnade.” ABC News, 17 Dec. 2025.
The above-noted measures indicate a new phase in the evolution of the Trump cult: The mission to engrave Trump’s name and his version of history upon the institutions of American government.
Feeding the Cult
In the early days of his first administration, Trump’s sycophantic enablers and supporters quickly learned that catering to his fragile and inflated ego was essential to political survival and success. The international community took notice, from the flattery employed by Vladimir Putin and his surrogates to Qatar’s gift of a $400 million dollar luxury jet. But perhaps no spectacle has proven quite as outlandish and farcical as FIFA’s creation of a new “peace prize” honoring Trump. The award ceremony itself overtly fed and fostered the burgeoning cult of Trump.
“Trump, who had openly campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize, had been heavily expected to receive the newly created FIFA prize. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, a close ally of Trump, has said he thought Trump should have won the Nobel for his efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.
In awarding the prize, Infantino told Trump it was a ‘beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go.’ Trump promptly placed the medal around his neck. The certificate that Infantino handed Trump recognizes the U.S. president for his actions to “promote peace and unity around the world.’
Infantino also presented Trump with a gold trophy with his name on it that depicts hands holding up the world. ‘You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way,’ said Infantino, who spoke after a video was played that showed images of Trump meeting with world leaders from countries whose conflicts he has taken credit for resolving.’
The FIFA president was also on hand Thursday at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, where Trump and the leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda signed a deal aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Congo.”
Kim, Seung Min. “FIFA Gives Its New Peace Prize to Trump.” AP News, 5 Dec. 2025.
Critics of Trump and FIFA roundly criticized and mocked the spectacle.
“Trump received FIFA’s made-up, not-to-be-taken-seriously-at-all token award that was created solely for the purpose of stroking the president’s considerable ego. He got a gaudy, gold trophy — the better to match the Oval Office! — a medal he immediately put on and a certificate to commemorate the embarrassing, err, momentous occasion.
(This is) in recognition of his exceptional and extraordinary actions to promote peace and unity around the world,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino gushed ahead of the 2026 World Cup draw in Washington, D.C.
Which actions are those specifically? The poor fisherman killings that are likely illegal and might even be war crimes? The racist slurs directed at Somali people? The harassment and abuse of brown-skinned people in a bid to enforce this racially pure vision of America while promoting ‘reverse migration’? The elimination of life-saving aid to people in need?”
Armour, Nancy. “Opinion: Trump Doesn’t Deserve Peace Prize, Even FIFA’s Fake One.” USA Today, 5 Dec. 2025.
“It’s honestly humiliating that other countries are treating our president like a child, like a baby … Our president is an actual child and other countries are treating him like a child while giving him gifts to placate him for policy. This should scare everybody who cares about the constitution…”
Mockler, Adam. “Mockler: Trump’s FIFA Peace Prize May Be the Most Humiliating for the U.S.” CNN, 6 Dec. 2025.
For his part, Trump basked in the glory of his new award, calling it “one of the greatest honors” of his life and congratulating himself for making the world a safer place.
It’s a safe bet that other organizations, parties, and even governments will follow FIFA’s example and adulate Trump in a transaction for financial and political gains. It’s also hard to imagine that Trump would ever decline any sort of tribute made in his honor.
Marxism-Leninism: History and the Path Forward
Western institutions often point to the USSR in Stalin’s time as the foremost example of a cult of personality. In doing this they try to conflate Marxism-Leninism with politicized idolatry. It was W.B. Bland who correctly asserted that a cult of personality came into existence during the time of Stalin’s leadership. But Bland further explained that the cult was created by those who sought to undermine and corrupt the Soviet Union and the myth was perpetuated by revisionists in their campaigns to permanently damage Stalin’s legacy.
“The initiator of the ‘cult of personality’ around Stalin was, in fact, Karl Radek, who pleaded guilty to treason at his public trial in 1937.
A typical example of the ‘cult’ is the following quotation from 1936:
‘Miserable pygmies! They lifted their hands against the greatest of all living men, our wise leader Comrade Stalin. We assure you, Comrade Stalin, that we will increase our Stalinist vigilance still more and close our ranks around the Stalinist Central Committee and the great Stalin.’
The author of these words was one Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced the ‘cult’ as an indication of Stalin’s ‘vanity’ and ‘personal power’.
It was Khrushchev too who introduced the term ‘vozhd’ for Stalin — a term meaning ‘leader’ and equivalent to the Nazi term ‘Fuehrer’.
Why should the revisionists have built up this ‘cult of personality’ around Stalin?
It was, I suggest, because it disguised the fact that not Stalin and the Marxist-Leninists, but they — concealed opponents of socialism — who held a majority in the leadership. It enabled them to take actions — such as the arrest of many innocent persons between 1934 and 1938 (when they controlled the security forces) and subsequently blame these ‘breaches of socialist legality’ upon Stalin.
Stalin himself is on record as telling the German author Lion Feuchtwanger in 1936 that the ‘cult of his personality’ was being built up by his political opponents (I quote:)
‘…with the aim of discrediting him at a later date’.”
Bland, W.B. “Stalin: The Myth and the Reality – Paper Originally Scheduled To Be Read By Bill Bland At The Conference Of ‘International Struggle: Marxist-Leninist’ In October 1999” Ml-Review.ca. Accessed 16 Dec. 2025.
Bland explained the extent of the effort as such:
“(T)he attack made by the revisionists, on the ‘cult of personality’ in the Soviet Union was an attack not only upon Stalin personally as a leading Marxist-Leninist, a leading defender of socialism, but was the first stage in an attack upon Marxism-Leninism and the socialist system in the Soviet Union.”
Bland, W.B. “The ‘Cult of the Individual’: A paper read by Bill Bland (of the Communist League- UK) to the Stalin Society in May 1991” ML-Review.ca, 2025. Accessed 15 Dec. 2025.
The cult of personality was detrimental to the world communist movement, enabling the Khruscevite restoration of capitalism in the USSR. It also proved a model for the garish personality cults that have thrived under the likes of revisionists such as Nicolae Ceaușescu and DPRK’s Kim family.
With respect to Trump’s personality cult, it is Trump himself – an egomaniac and narcissist of incalculable proportions – who has long-cultivated his own “brand.” He did this first in business and now in politics. Those who follow him with religious-like fervor view him as a saviour. He has free rein to wreck and ruin, with complete impunity and with the approval of his devotees.
Marxist-Leninists – collectively and individually – oppose the cult of personality. Both in regard to its historical corruption of the world communist movement; and in the present struggle against Trumpism. This means speaking out, educating those who lack political insight, and organizing political opposition.
There remains a small chance that the Democrats may become America’s ruling party once more. Perhaps then they may roll back some of Trump’s more brazen efforts to weave his likeness and ego into the fabric of the nation’s society and government. But a future with anything resembling a free and fair general election is very much in doubt. The Democrats collectively show little resolve or effectiveness in the opposition to fascism. Simply put, the American working class cannot afford to place its future in the hands of Democrats. As such, it appears most likely that Trump’s personality cult will guide matters of public policy and everyday life for the foreseeable future. In truth, the only credible antidote to the toxin of Trumpism is an organized Marxist-Leninist party, and such leadership is crucial at this point in time.
