Maddow Blog-Republican bill would name the DC Metro the 'Trump Train,' as part of a ridiculous pattern

[LetMyPeopleVote]

One historian described the Republican effort to name a bunch of things after Trump as “pretty crazy.”

The list of sycophantic pro-Trump GOP bills now includes:
- renaming DC metro trains after him
- putting him on 0 and 0 bills
- renaming Dulles Airport after him
- making his birthday a national holiday
- adding him to Mount Rushmore
As one historian put it, this is getting “pretty crazy.”

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2025-05-30T17:42:23.501Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/republican-bill-name-dc-metro-trump-train-part-ridiculous-pattern-rcna209970

Now that the president has returned to power, Steube is still thinking along similar lines, though as The Hill reported, the GOP congressman now has found something new he wants to rename.

Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) introduced a bill Thursday to rename the Washington, D.C., subway system after President Trump and his MAGA slogan. The Make Autorail Great Again Act would withhold federal funding to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, known as WMATA, until it rebrands as the Washington Metropolitan Authority for Greater Access, or WMAGA — a similar acronym to the Make America Great Again slogan — and renames the Metrorail the Trump Train.

......The proposal joins a growing list of related Republican measures that are currently pending on Capitol Hill:

There’s a bill that would create a $250 bill, and its Republican authors also want to feature Trump’s face. (Existing federal law prohibits any living person from being depicted on U.S. currency, but the bill would create a one-time exception to the prohibition.)

There’s a similar bill that would put Trump’s face on $100 bills, replacing Benjamin Franklin.
There’s a bill to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday.

There’s a bill to carve Trump’s face into Mount Rushmore.

There’s a bill to rename Dulles Airport after Trump.

What’s more, this list doesn’t include kindred efforts from the incumbent president’s sycophantic allies, including measures to nominate Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize and to allow Trump to seek a third term......

As The New York Times recently summarized, “A competition of sorts has broken out for whom the Republican base will see as the most pro-Trump member.” From the article:

The rush of flattering legislation, some of which even the lawmakers concede is unlikely to pass, stands apart from merely carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda. ... ‘It shows the power that Donald Trump has within the Republican Party these days, and that Republican members want to stay on his good side,’ said Sean M. Theriault, government professor at the University of Texas at Austin. ‘A lot of these people are in really safe districts, but they’re also thinking about what their next step is. And so if they have designs on being in the Senate or running for governor or even a position in the administration, then there’s no better way to get on his good side than to do these over-the-top moves toward him.’

That was published before most of the aforementioned bills were introduced

I’m reminded anew of something Filipe Campante, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, said about these efforts: “The reason why this is bad is the very fact that it’s transparently ridiculous: It shows how this is becoming a Kim Jong-Un-style cult of personality, where the sycophants try to outdo one another in their groveling to get the attention of Dear Leader.”

That competition, alas, is apparently intensifying.