(This article published previously in shorter version: www.baptistnews.com.
The Treasury Department has announced plans to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary in 2026 with a one-dollar coin depicting President Trump. In a draft rendering, he appears twice, and alone: on the obverse, in a profile partly eclipsing the word LIBERTY; and on the reverse, his fist raised below the words FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.
Every commitment I have ever held dear as a Baptist preacher and rhetorical scholar feels threatened by this bit of symbolism. Minting of the Trump coin flies in the face of everything I was ever taught about the spirit of America. I know there’s no specific law prohibiting this self-promotion. Given maga’s literalistic mode inherited by the mage majority known as evangelicals, I am awae that Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1792, which stipulated that American coins bear an allegorical depiction of freedom, along with the inscription “Liberty.” It did not specifically forbid the use of a president’s likeness. Trump’s image on the coin may not be illegal, but it sure as hell is tacky and concerning.
In the 1860s Spencer M. Clark, a currency superintendent under investigation for sex scandal (that will soothe maga hearts), put his own likeness on the 5-cent note. Afterward, a furious Congress passed a law stipulating that “no portrait or likeness of any living person hereafter engraved, shall be placed upon any of the bonds, securities, notes, fractional or postal currency of the United States.”
The law did not specifically mention coins.
In 2005, Congress authorized circulating commemorative dollar coins honoring each former president but stipulated that none “bear the image of a living former or current president.”
Legislation does prohibit the image of a president on the back side of a coin: “No head and shoulders portrait or bust of any person, living or dead, and no portrait of a living person may be included in the design on the reverse of any coin …”
In line with Trump’s habit of flouting convention, ignoring tradition, skirting and challenging settled law, the two-headed Trump coin will be a constant reminder of Trump’s presidency.
My mind flooded with images in a remorseless rendition of Caesars, kings, emperors and dictators with their faces on coins. Then Jesus being shown a coin of Caesar to trick him popped in for a visit. Not fooled by the Pharisees, Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” Jesus makes clear: The very possession of the coin makes them idolaters. Here we have a Second Commandment case study: “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above or that is on the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Exodus 20:4 – 5). “No one can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matthew 6:24).
Can there be a more damning visualization of idolatry in America? Evangelicals are long-toothed iconoclasts, but now they bow before a two-faced Trump. Trump, in the ways of the crude, nouveaux rich, eagerly plasters his image and name everywhere he can.
Trump’s imperial overreach, and persona/image-making at times reveals truth Trump didn’t intend. The Trump coin reveals a maga desire to rule. As Jesus puts it: “You know that the rulers of the gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 26 It will not be so among you, but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:25).
The proposed coin is more a silverplated version of a campaign button. On the front side of the coin, Trump is the stern but good father of our nation and on the obverse side he is the proverbial “bad boy” – the angry, transgressive leader who will save the nation.
There can be many representations in this hydra-headed Trump phenomenon, the one core element consists of a monarchical pretension contradicting American independence. Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University says the coin should celebrate the American republic and its people. Having the sitting president appear on a semi quincentennial coin, he claims only feeds “the cult of an individual perpetrated by that same individual” — exactly what Washington was intent on avoiding. He adds, “It is anti-American at its core.”
The coin is more a celebration of Trump’s January 6 Insurrection than our nation’s celebration of democracy and independence. The Trump silver dollar coin (I can’t believe it’s not going to be gold) underscores Trump’s anti-democracy proclivities.
Put the coin in the Trump store. Make it available on the Trump web site. Sell the coin as the trinket it is alongside MAGA hats, Trump watches, and Bibles. List the price at $25. This is not commemoration; this is carnivalesque spectacle.
The back side of the coin, with the maga war chant – “Fight! Fight! Fight!” – depicts Trump as the ultimate bad boy beloved by maga. The Trump glare shows him wielding his anger and macho rhetoric in defense of his followers. Hiding beneath the Trump two-faced image of the coin is an authoritarianism bereft of democracy.
“Fight” was the theme word of Trump’s January 6 speech. Twenty-one times he uses the word. The speech fills with battle cries reminiscent of King Richard I urging his troops into battle.
“Fight. Fight. Fight.” “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
“If they don’t fight, we have to primary the hell out of the ones that don’t fight,” Trump said. “You primary them. We’re going to let you know who they are.”
“Brave is never giving up. You fight no matter what.”
“Fight for Trump!”
“Fight! Fight! Fight!” were the words of Trump as he was carried from the stage in Dover, Pennsylvania after the assassination attempt (It looked staged in a surreal “reality television” way). His clenched fists and glare reinforced his militant mindset. And now, all the evangelical illusion of God saving Trump to save the nation mixes with maga notions of Trump as God’s chosen strong man, and messiah.
Trumpism screams the Janus-faced, insider-outsider, good father-bad boy discourse with its themes of resentment, nationalism, anger, triumphalism, and militarism. Trump reeks of the hostility of a bitter old man seeking vengeance.
There is no more revealing photo of Trump’s demolition policies than that of the East wing being demolished by a backhoe. And maga loves Trump’s demolition projects – literal and symbolic. It feeds maga lust for power. It is especially cathectic for white men who feel left out of everyone else’s rights movement, who feel victimized and persecuted by liberal policies of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Even a minimum loss of status triggers white rage.
Trump’s Janus-face on the coin captures the outrage and belligerence of maga in all its Trumpian glory. If you flip the coin to determine home field advantage or a winner, it always comes up Trump.
The last time a living president was depicted on a coin was 1926. The 1926 coin featured the long-dead first president, George Washington, beside the very-much-alive current president, Calvin Coolidge, whose appearance broke with American convention not to depict a sitting president on money.
The Washington-Coolidge half-dollar is the only American coin to feature a sitting president. Coolidge and Hoover bequeathed America the Great Depression. Trump and maga threaten a similar fate for the nation. As E. J. Dionne notes, “Even Mr. Trump’s most faithful supporters have found it hard to miss that he has been so self-involved, so openly solicitous to billionaires and so obsessed with making money. His pursuit of a regal new ballroom at the White House and photos of the wrecking job it required will long stand as the visual backdrop for the words “out of touch.” His main policy achievement, the “one big beautiful bill,” aims to cut taxes on the wealthy while slashing Medicaid and food stamps. This smacks of contempt for so many of those who put him into office and rely on both programs.”
Since President Eisenhower America has put “In God we trust” on our money. Now, we plan to add the son of Mammon to a silver dollar with his face on both sides. For a president who has advertised for the Nobel Peace Prize, his face on Mount Rushmore, his face on both sides of a commemorative coin doesn’t surprise.
But it should alarm every god-fearing, patriotic believer in our founding principles of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Historian Gordon Wood, our premier scholar of the Revolutionary War says the primary spirit of Americans was disrespect of authority. He catalogs how within a decade Americans embraced the radical notion that individuals were both the source of a government’s legitimacy and its greatest hope for progress.
America is home to independent-minded individuals for whom a primary virtue is disrespect for authority.
Siding with that American spirit that we are home to independent-minded individuals for whom a primary virtue is disrespect for authority, I recommend dropping every Trump silver dollar in those ubiquitous one-armed thieves covering the floor of Mammon’s temples known as casinos (they bankrupted Trump at least 3 times) and take your chances on getting rich. Your odds are about the same as sending checks to the aptly named televangelist Creflo Dollar.
