Trump's Relentless Self-Promotion Fosters an American Cult of Personality

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/us/politics/trumps-american-cult-of-personality.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MVA.hv0X.1c1bfLqb7FYP&smid=url-share

Trump’s Relentless Self-Promotion Fosters an American Cult of Personality

President Trump has engaged in a spree of self-aggrandizement unlike any of his predecessors, fostering a mythologized superhuman persona and making himself the inescapable force at home and around the world.


The racist online video that President Trump recently shared and then deleted generated a bipartisan furor because of its portrayal of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. What was little remarked on was how it presented Mr. Trump himself — as the “King of the Jungle.”

After a year back in the White House, Mr. Trump’s efforts to promote himself as the singularly dominant figure in the world have become so commonplace that they no longer seem surprising. He regularly depicts himself in a heroic, almost godly fashion, as a king, as a Superman, as a Jedi knight, as a military hero, even as a pope in a white cassock.

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His White House is pressuring the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery to display portraits of Mr. Trump by his supporters. A group of cryptocurrency investors has shelled out $300,000 to forge a 15-foot-tall gold-covered bronze statue of Mr. Trump called “Don Colossus” to be installed at his golf complex in Doral, Fla.

His administration is considering designating a new class of battleships in Mr. Trump’s name. His allies are pressuring foreign leaders to endorse his bid for the Nobel Peace Prize and threatening consequences for resisting. Some supporters in Congress have even proposed adding his face to Mount Rushmore, an effort that, for the moment, has gained little traction.

This spree of self-aggrandizement goes beyond mere vanity, although Mr. Trump suffers from no particular shortage in that department. “I really have a big ego,” he noted at the National Prayer Breakfast this month, an assessment that drew no disagreement. What Mr. Trump is actually doing, though, is making himself the inescapable force in American life.

[dalton99a]

1. The evil moron belongs in the landfill of history

[chowmama]

2. And in about 4 years, we get to start tearing it all down.

If not before.

How many buildings, memorials or anything else still have Hitler's name on them? It's not that Hitler isn't remembered, he's just remembered for his repulsiveness, insanity, incompetence...Trump doesn't believe it, but there is a difference between fame and infamy. His name will inspire only shame and disgust.

[dalton99a]

3. +1. Excise the evil from anything funded by taxpayers

[DinahMoeHum]

4. With apologies to "The Ten Commandments" (1956). . .

Let the name of Trump be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of America. Let the name of Trump be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time

So it shall be written.

So it shall be done.

[GenThePerservering]

5. This is overlooking the obvious

NONE of this would be possible without a cringing, weak, opportunistic 'ruling' party, a lot of manipulative billionaire business grifters and a complicit press. Trump in himself is an empty pot.

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

8. True

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

6. The consequence of living in a dumbphuck nation

"No one in this world so far as I know ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people"- an apt quote attributed to HL Mencken in 1926. Trump is just the latest in the long line of hucksters, bloviators and demagogues to captivate the Average Joes of America. From the old time circus freak show to the modern day program lineup of TLC, we are fascinated with spectacle. Hegseth, Bondi, Patel...jeez this list could go on, they all have their places right next to the bearded lady and the dog---faced boy (or in modern day equivelents, my 600 lb. life and Dr. Pimple Popper). Throw in a good dose of racism and xenophobia, bake at 350 for an hour and you have Trump's America.

[tanyev]

7. It's also created a very large number of people that really, really detest him.

Last edited Sun Feb 15, 2026, 02:06 PM - Edit history (1)

Of course I’d heard of him before The Apprentice, but I paid very little attention to him through all those years except perhaps to laugh at photos of his increasingly ridiculous hairdo.

But ever since he started campaigning for president in 2015, every weird and repellent self-aggrandizing statement from him has increased my negative opinion of him.