Alan Zendell, December 23, 2025

Just for context, today, December 23, 2025, two days before Christmas, the two major wars Trump promised to end, eleven months ago, on day one of his administration, are still raging in Gaza and Ukraine. Completely ignoring Trump, Vladimir Putin has been destroying Ukraine’s power infrastructure leaving Ukrainians freezing in the dark as winter sets in, while Trump supports Russia. Millions of Americans are facing the loss of health care, unemployment and inflation are rising, the Trump administration is threatening ground action in Venezuela without Congressional approval, and the Supreme Court is considering cases that could re-write our Constitution. With all that going on, our president’s focus remains on memorializing and enriching himself.

If Trump can attach his brand to something, he will, with no regard for laws, regulations, or good taste. Remember Trump Airlines? In 1989 Trump bought the highly profitable Eastern Airlines shuttle connecting New York’s LaGuardia airport with Washington’s [Reagan] National. The Trump Shuttle was an economic disaster that lasted three years. Remember Trump University? It was never accredited, never offered a degree, and was described by the National Review as “a massive scam.” It ceased to operate after six years among a flurry of lawsuits and complaints of fraud.

Trump’s narcissistic need to memorialize himself also resulted in many other failed business ventures, which cost his investment partners billions in losses. The short list includes: Trump Casinos, (Atlantic City,) Trump Tower Tampa, trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Fragrances, Trump Magazine, Trump Ice, Trump Mattresses, Trump Mortgage, GoTrump.com, the New Jersey Generals football team, and Trump: The Game. From a business point of view, they were all total failures, generally not delivering what they promised.

In the eleven months of Trump’s second administration, he has focused more on enriching himself, his family, and his wealthy allies than anything else. His crypto venture is hard to track, but Reuters reported that in the twelve months since Trump won the 2024 elections, Trump’s support for crypto stocks caused a $1.2 trillion boom, that enabled his wealthy friends to reap most of those profits with well-timed stock trades, and the Trump Organization profited by more than $800 million. While all this was going on, Todd Blanche, formerly Trump’s personal defense lawyer and now second in command at DOJ, who was required by law to divest his hundreds of thousands of dollars of crypto investments within ninety days, not only failed to do so, but ended all ongoing DOJ investigations of crypto and killed the DOJ team looking into crypto fraud.

There’s the Trump ballroom which caused the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, apparently in violation of federal regulations. Trump Gold coins can be purchased for between $13 and $19,000 at current (volatile) prices, and guess where all that money goes? Now Trump wants to build Trump-class battleships as part of a “gold fleet” with his face emblazoned on the upper decks at a price tag of around $8 billion each, money that would have to be appropriated by Congress first. Moreover, he appointed himself to be part of the Navy’s design team, because he’s “an aesthetic person” and the new ships need to look cool.

Trump is plastering his name over Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, ignoring the legal responsibility to obtain Congressional approval, and the U. S. Institute for Peace is now the Donald J. Trump Institute for Peace. And let’s not forget TrumpRx, which claims it will sell prescription drugs to Americans at the lowest possible prices. Assuming TrumpRx ever gets off the ground, it will benefit Trump and his family and have an unfair advantage over other drug providers because Trump used the power of his office to force drug companies to create special price lists just for TrumpRx. That’s the way much of organized crime made its money.

Donald Trump is the first president in history who ever tried to create a monument to himself, and there is still a movement among sycophants to add his face to Mount Rushmore. His latest pitch is for a Napoleon-style Arc de Triomphe to commemorate the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The arch was originally proposed to be the Independence Arch, but Trump prefers Arc de Trump.

For any normal person capable of shame, all this would be obscene. But Trump is not normal in any sense. His unquenchable thirst for adulation and recognition, especially from autocrats like Putin and Xi, dominate all his decisions. We can only hope that saner heads prevail in the end, but with people like Pete Hegseth and Pam Bondi in his Cabinet, appearances don’t seem to matter at all. We can almost hear them chortling to themselves: “Who cares if our approval numbers drop to zero once we’ve gained total control of the government? Who’s going to say NO to us then?”