Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.
File this under “You can’t make this stuff up”:
The Trump administration has rebranded the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) as the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, complete with the president’s name installed in large block letters on the building’s façade. The new signage went up just ahead of a planned peace agreement signing between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It’s an extraordinary development for an institution created by Congress in 1984 to provide independent research, conflict-resolution training, and nonpartisan policy advice. Earlier this year, the administration dissolved USIP’s board, dismissed most of the staff, and transferred the building to the federal government – moves that triggered ongoing legal challenges.
The irony here is hard to miss: an organization dedicated to conflict prevention is now being remade in the image of a president who has long campaigned for a Nobel Peace Prize and who routinely touts himself as the country’s greatest “dealmaker,” even as he sows discord within the United States.
The State Department’s announcement of the renaming – claiming it was “to reflect the greatest dealmaker in our nation’s history” and concluding with “the best is yet to come” – might have been merely boastful if it weren’t paired with the administration’s increasingly hostile rhetoric at home. This week, Trump denounced Somali immigrants as “garbage” allegedly ruining America, rhetoric that echoes the xenophobic accusations once leveled against Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Chinese immigrants. Demonizing newcomers has a long and shameful lineage in U.S. history; Somali Americans are simply the latest group to be dehumanized for political gain.
The contradiction becomes sharper when set against the administration’s record abroad. Even as Trump disparages Somalia, the U.S. military continues air and drone strikes there – actions tied to the country’s strategic location on the Horn of Africa, not any genuine threat to the United States. Most Americans are unaware that U.S. operations in Somalia have persisted for years, with civilian casualties an ever-present risk. You simply can’t reconcile these ongoing military actions with the administration’s celebration of Trump as a “peace president.”
And that’s the broader problem. The renaming of USIP is not a harmless vanity project. It’s a symbol of a deeper turn: away from independent diplomacy and toward a politics that equates peace with personal branding, and national security with fearmongering about vulnerable communities. If “the best is yet to come,” it’s hard to see how.
To me, the saddest part of this are those who continue to embrace Trump as a leader to admire, even to emulate. “He’s a bigot and a racist – just like me!” is truly a sad rallying cry.
To change the subject only slightly: I was talking to a colleague yesterday about the U.S. space program and whether we’ll return to the moon or mount a manned mission to Mars and I joked: Name the landing site or the station after Trump and you’ll likely see heightened funding and support. “Moon Base Trump”: It could happen.
Trump’s egotism, his narcissism, and especially his bigotry and bile are reaching galactic proportions.
