Why is everyone so scandalized? It’s not like the president’s face isn’t everywhere already.
Behold, the face of the president:
Available for purchase today at 12PM ET: 2026 President Donald J. Trump $1 Coin. These coins are also in circulation, so check your pocket change. Collect them today! #CoinCollecting #America250https://t.co/g4eJes21ER pic.twitter.com/4OqkQ2sa9W
— United States Mint (@usmint) September 2, 2026
Donald Trump’s visage is already circulating on these gold-finished brass coins. Some have taken exception to the “controversial move” of putting a sitting president’s face on legal tender, but their objections are unreasonable.
Sure, this hasn’t been done in 100 years, and the last person to do it was arguably the least imperial president in that century: Calvin Coolidge. Never mind that his face was partially eclipsed by George Washington’s. And like the 1926 coin, this one will cost a lot more than it’s worth.
“The rolls of $1 coins (25 to a roll) go for $61. A bag of 100 coins goes for $154.50,” ABC News reported. Likewise, back in 1926, “few people cared to part with the required $1 to purchase a commemorative half dollar,” the historian David Bowers observed. “When all was said and done, the staggering quantity of 859,408 half dollars went back to the Mint to be melted!” Perhaps the same fate is in store for Trump’s coins.
So why is everyone so scandalized? It’s not like the president’s face isn’t everywhere already.
Washington, D.C., residents are intimately acquainted with Trump’s mug. It adorns banners that grace the façades of the Justice Department, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, and even the construction projects sprouting up across the city. The rest of the country will soon share Washington’s experience.
The president’s first series of midterm election ads designed to promote Republican candidates will reportedly be “heavy on ‘me.’” If the Democratic strategy is to talk about Trump incessantly, so, too, is Trump’s, according to The Atlantic.
“The president ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record that will serve as a backdrop to the hundreds of individual House and Senate contests,” its report read. Even if that’s not what most Americans or even many Republicans are looking for, that’s what they’re going to get.