What did Donald Trump do today?

He demanded and got an illegal US coin honoring himself.

The U.S. Mint announced today that gold-colored $1 coins with Trump's face on them are now in circulation.

 

It is flatly illegal for the US Mint to issue any currency, whether coins or bills, featuring a living person. 31 U.S. Code § 5114 (b) states, unambiguously, that "only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities."

Trump appears to have simply ordered the Mint to proceed in violation of the law, and without consulting the outside review committee that would have had to approve it. Both Republican and Democratic members of that committee were opposed to Trump putting his face on real United States currency.

American money joins a very long list of things that Trump has tried, and in some cases succeeded, in using the power and influence of the presidency to get his name or face attached to since returning to office. It includes, but is not limited to: airports, train stations, passports, independent government agencies, savings accounts, government benefits websites, a class of battleships, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, national parks passes (which the National Parks Service is under orders to void if Trump's face is covered), and special pay-to-play backdoor to citizenship for wealthy people.

Why does this matter?

• This kind of self-obsession is dangerous and pathological even before the powers of the office of the President are involved. 

• Leaders obsessed with forcing their own image into everyday life aren't exactly uncommon in history, but those memorials don't often work as well as the dictators hope they will.