‘Brander in chief’ Trump puts his mark on the federal government

President Donald Trump made his money by slapping his name on hotels and products. Now he’s doing the same thing to the US government.

There’s TrumpRx, a website for prescription drugs. The Trump Gold Card, a high-dollar ticket to citizenship. A Trump coin. A Trump fighter jet.

Beginning with his decadeslong career in real estate, Trump has been deeply attuned to branding and marketing — capturing the public’s attention in simple but memorable ways.

In his second term as president, Trump and his team have built upon that skill with a sophisticated operation — the federal government now utilizing the lessons learned at the Trump Organization. And the president has been hands-on, treating his administration like a business to be promoted — a precedent that could be adopted by future campaigns and administrations on both sides of the aisle, but that has raised concerns about the commoditization of the White House.

Trump’s most significant marketing effort in his political career has been MAGA: “Make America Great Again,” a tagline for his 2016 campaign adopted from a 1980 Ronald Reagan slogan. MAGA has subsequently become the signifier of a much broader political movement — spawning not just hats and T-shirts, but a rallying call and identity.

“What Trump understands is how to capture attention. That is his master stroke,” said Camille Moore, a branding expert and influencer.

“He understands that simplicity and repetition create stickiness. ‘Make America Great Again’ triggers aspirational feelings. These are very simple concepts that anybody can get behind, and that’s what the best branding is based on,” said Moore, who has worked with companies including Saks Fifth Avenue, Netflix and L’Oréal.

Trump and his team have sought to take that success beyond the Oval Office. There are the visual manifestations: a proposed commemorative $1 coin featuring the president’s likeness, a draft of which has been confirmed by the US Treasury. It’s not clear whether the design will be minted, since it’s against US law to display the image of a sitting president or living former president on a coin.

Tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars have been spent on banners with portraits of Trump hung atop three federal buildings in Washington, DC, according to a report from Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.

There are branded products, services and spaces: The president recently unveiled TrumpRx, a direct-to-consumer website for discounted drugs set to launch early next year. The name, one White House official said, was the result of a brainstorming session and an effort to reflect Trump’s personal involvement.

“He was not involved in picking the name, but it was not a difficult one to land on. We thought it had a catchy element to it,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, said in the Oval Office earlier this month.

A $1 million immigrant visa called the “Trump Gold Card” promises to “unlock life in America.”

Boeing is building a next-generation fighter jet called the “F-47,” a name that was chosen “in consultation with the Secretary of Defense” and honors the World War II-era P-47 aircraft, the founding year of the Air Force, and “the 47th President’s pivotal support for the development of the world’s first sixth-generation fighter,” according to a statement from an Air Force spokesperson obtained by Bloomberg News.

Trump has also called on US military officials to develop a “Golden Dome” defense system, a riff on Israel’s Iron Dome.

And he’s renovated one of the White House’s most iconic spaces, the Rose Garden, rebranding it as the “Rose Garden Club” with exclusive dinners for officials, lawmakers and donors. The club has a bespoke logo and has been advertised on his official public schedule. That Trump-fostered exclusivity comes as tours of the People’s House for the general public have been halted due to construction on the president’s planned ballroom expansion.

“He’s taking an approach more like Nike or Apple than a politician, and that speaks to why it’s working. … He’s leveraging what businesses that make billions of dollars have proven to do,” Moore said.

But unlike Nike or Apple, the US government isn’t a for-profit business.

Trump has insisted he’s paying for White House renovations himself. At a Wednesday night dinner to thank high-dollar donors and investors for their support for his $200 million ballroom, he said the project had been fully funded. At the same dinner, he held up models for a new triumphal arch he’s involved in planning in Washington, DC — another mark of how he’s imposing his aesthetic on the nation’s capital. (It was not immediately clear how it would be paid for.)

Politicians have long sought to take credit for their accomplishments and to make those actions clear to American voters.

But Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the way Trump has gone about it has raised broader concerns about the president’s efforts to promote himself.

“Donald Trump has really supercharged this and made it very much about his name and his identity, and has, in many ways, made the whole government a vehicle to promote him,” Bookbinder said.

Trump branding does not directly violate any laws, but it does violate long-standing norms, he said.

“When you add all of this up, it has the effect of mobilizing the government for the political benefit of a particular leader — and that has some dangerous implications, even if the specific examples are pretty minor in and of themselves,” Bookbinder said.

Trump is the driving force behind many of these efforts.

“All of these have been the president’s ideas, and he is the brander in chief. He’s an expert at marketing. That’s how he made a living and a fortune and created one of the most famous business empires in the world before being elected as president of the United States,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an interview with CNN. “All of these fun little names are his ideas, and he has a team who’s very much willing to bring them to life.”

Trump has also used these principles over the years to coin monikers for his political opponents: Low Energy Jeb (Bush), Lyin’ Ted (Cruz), Crooked Hillary (Clinton), and Sleepy Joe (Biden).

“It’s so simple. And it’s painfully memorable when your opponent is trying to be so thoughtful and prescribed. You can’t win against that,” said Moore.

World leaders seeking to cultivate closer ties to Trump have also leaned into branding. A peace agreement between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan has granted the US rights to a new corridor: the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.

Second term’s the charm

Officials argue that Trump’s branding efforts have been amplified this term by a staff that has a better grasp on who Trump is.

“There’s a big difference this go-round as compared to the previous. He’s a more known entity. And that has made picking up his lead and anticipating what he wants and what he likes and going with it as a branding tool very — not easy — but it’s a skill people have learned how to adopt,” said a White House official granted anonymity to speak freely.

The official said many of the first-term political operatives with decades of expertise weren’t as willing to follow Trump’s less traditional lead.

A second White House official echoed that sentiment: “It’s reflective of how MAGA went from a one-man show to a bigger, well-oiled machine. And the branding reflects how that’s one of the fruits of that investment that he’s made.”

This time around, there has been an emphasis on hiring staff from outside of the Washington bubble who have more diverse backgrounds, including athletics.

“I figured, if someone can make a 2-14 college football team look exciting, then what could they possibly do with legislation? That’s why the videos and a lot of the branded content, it looks different, it looks fresh, it looks like stuff people are use to consuming,” the first official said.

The Biden administration made its own attempts to brand its successes, including signage crediting then-President Joe Biden with construction projects funded by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. But the Biden White House largely struggled to connect the president’s achievements with voters.

Reimagining social media

The Trump White House has also reimagined its role on social media, launching accounts with coordinated aesthetics that often push the envelope and troll Democrats.

Unlike previous administrations, including Trump’s first, there are fewer layers of bureaucracy and approval chains before a post gets published, the first White House official said.

That has prompted blowback on multiple occasions, including a recent racist video social media post, which appears to be AI-generated, depicting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and a mustache.

But it has also allowed those accounts to be much more active, something that Moore said Democrats could learn from.

“In the social media age, whoever is more nimble, whoever is faster on their feet, whoever understands social media better — who can pivot — is who can win,” she said, adding, “You have to lean into not being polished.”

‘I was a product’

Trump’s understanding of branding principles began early in his time at the Trump Organization, the overarching company of namesake hotel and real estate properties.

“Someone recently said that I was a product — I didn’t mind the comment because the product that the name Trump represents is fantastic,” he wrote in a foreword to a “Trump University Branding 101” textbook, published in 2008.

He continued, “There is no way we can ignore the power of branding in the world market today — so take the time to establish your brand carefully. Give it your full attention and realize that every detail and dynamic will be consequential.”

Not all of Trump’s branded endeavors have proved successful. There is an entire Wikipedia page of Trump businesses that went bankrupt.

Moore compared Trump attaching his name to products and ideas to the name value of a brand like Apple. While the tech company has experienced recent troubles, consumers are still buying iPhones — “because there’s a confidence to the name of Apple.”

“What we can learn from him is he understands risk and what’s needed to make an impact,” she said.

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