President Donald Trump has increasingly embraced monarchical imagery, as he continues his drastic moves to remake the federal government in his image.
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED,” Trump wrote Wednesday on Truth Social, the social media site he owns. “LONG LIVE THE KING!”
And in a follow-up post on X, the official White House account posted what appeared to be a parody of a TIME magazine cover with a beaming Trump wearing a crown in front of the New York City skyline.
This recent turn is an extension of Trump’s embrace of hyperbole and larger-than-life imagery, including an aura of divinity his supporters foisted onto him after he survived an assassination attempt during a July campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
“With God, the scripture tells us all things are possible,” Trump said at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month. “Well look at me, I’m standing before you today. I shouldn’t be here.”
Trump is known to focus meticulously on his personal image and brand, from how events are staged to picking Cabinet members, in part, because they look like they’re out of “central casting.” By now, the image of a blood-spattered Trump defiantly waving his fist to a crowd of supporters in Pennsylvania has become an iconic American image.
In a statement to POLITICO, White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not explain what exactly Trump’s embrace of the imagery would mean, but said, “the Trump administration will continue to defend the cherished rights and freedoms of everyday Americans while putting America first.”
But now, at the start of his second term and as he openly ponders a third term despite constitutional guardrails against extending his presidency, he’s repeatedly put forward imagery not as a president but as a king.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump posted on Truth Social earlier this week, a variation of a quote attributed to the one-time French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
The emphasis comes at a time he is looking to consolidate governing power with a Republican-controlled Congress.
He’s signed executive orders that extend his power over independent regulatory agencies. He’s looked to purge the federal workforce of thousands of civil servants. And he’s targeted the Associated Press, one of the world’s most prominent media outlets, for not using language his government prefers.
The royal imagery posted by the White House has roiled many of his opponents, who have long worried that the country was veering toward authoritarianism as Trump looks to hoard governing power and eliminate court-sanctioned checks and balances.
“New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in a press conference Wednesday. “We sure as hell are not going to start now.”
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