Once upon a time, the Presidency was a scarce resource. It appeared at set intervals, in set places, with set limits. Scarcity conferred gravity. When the President spoke, people argued with the words—not about the lighting. When the President traveled, the trip served a purpose beyond mere visibility. When the President built monuments, they were called libraries, not personal altars.

Then came the Trumpverse.

We now live inside a presidency that is everywhere, always, all at once—on billboards, in courtrooms, in statues of gold, in arches of ego, in polls of declining approval, in congressional rebukes, in the permanent fog of self-promotion. The office is no longer a constitutional role. It is a content franchise. The state is no longer an instrument of governance. It is a stage set. The presidency is no longer scarce. It is overproduced.

When everything is Trump, nothing is presidential.

The New York Times described Trump's relentless self-promotion as a cultivated cult of personality, a politics that depends less on persuasion than on saturation.  A golden statue waits for its home, not as a metaphor but as a literal monument to the conversion of public office into private myth.  And when headlines ask whether the president is panicking about his legacy after the Epstein files, pointing to a giant arch erected in his honor, the joke writes itself: the man who said monuments were for losers is now shopping for them wholesale. 

This is not strength. This is brand inflation.

In my earlier essay, Everything Trump, All at Once, I argued that omnipresence devalues authority. When the presidency becomes a multiverse of appearances—every channel, every grievance, every prop—the office loses its texture. The signal-to-noise ratio collapses. The audience ceases to distinguish between state action and self-advertising. The result is not awe. It is fatigue.

Fatigue shows up in the numbers. Approval ratings continue to slide as voters say the president is doing worse than expected.    Optimism about the country has fallen to record lows, a national mood that pairs poorly with a leader who insists that mood can be fixed by building shinier monuments to himself.  And yet, even as approval craters, Republican leaders continue to give him what he wants—an odd arrangement in which the base is told to cheer louder while the broader public quietly leaves the room. 

The spectacle does not stop at optics. It bleeds into policy, where governance becomes another venue for performance. The House vote to disapprove of Trump’s Canada tariffs was not merely a policy disagreement; it was a reminder that even in a party strangled by loyalty, there are moments when institutions push back against the theater.  The vote did not end the show. It interrupted the act. In the Trumpverse, interruptions are treated as sabotage. The plot must continue.

This is where the moral vacuum matters. The Times’ assessment of a presidency organized around absence—absence of restraint, absence of humility, absence of responsibility—lands not as moralism but as diagnosis of Trump's presidency.  When there is no moral center, spectacle becomes the sole organizing principle. The state becomes a camera angle. Policy becomes a prop. Institutions become set pieces that are rearranged to flatter the star.

The comparison with prior presidencies sharpens the point. Where earlier administrations worked within institutional constraints—sometimes clumsily, sometimes controversially—the Trump presidency treats constraints as narrative obstacles to be kicked aside for applause. Emergency powers are not rare tools; they are the stage props he boots into view when the plot needs a jolt. The press is not an adversary to be rebutted; it is a villain to be delegitimized so the audience will boo on cue. Courts are not coequal branches; they are plot devices that either advance the story or must be written out of it.

This is why the cult imagery matters. The statue is not kitsch by accident. It is governance by souvenir. The arch is not architecture; it is preemptive legacy laundering. The relentless self-promotion is not just insecurity; it is a strategy. When the office is stripped of institutional gravity, the leader compensates by multiplying symbols of personal greatness. The more the presidency thins, the thicker the gold leaf gets.

But gold leaf flakes.

The paradox of the Trumpverse is that omnipresence accelerates depreciation. The more Trump's presidency is everywhere, the less it means anywhere. The more the president insists on his own historical stature, the more history notices the vacancy at the center. You can build statues to fill a void. You cannot build legitimacy that way. Legitimacy is earned through restraint, coherence, and outcomes that endure scrutiny under different camera angles.

In a republic that pretends to be bored by monarchs, this is a peculiar spectacle: a leader trying to manufacture permanence in a system designed to limit it. The Founders did not anticipate golden statues. They anticipated men who would confuse themselves with the office. The Constitution’s answer was not better branding. It was limited.

And limits are the one prop the Trumpverse refuses to use.

The presidency need not be everywhere. It needs to be weighty. It does not need statues. It needs standards. It does not need a multiverse of selves. It needs a single, accountable officeholder bound by institutions that bite. When those teeth are dulled by spectacle, the audience may still applaud—but the show is no longer governance. It is a souvenir shop reflecting the vacancy at the center of a presidency propped up by a shrinking minority.

~ Dunneagin

Once upon a time, the Presidency was a scarce resource. It appeared at set intervals, in set places, with set limits. Scarcity conferred gravity. When the President spoke, people argued with the words—not about the lighting. When the President traveled, the trip served a purpose beyond mere visibility. When the President built monuments, they were called libraries, not personal altars.

Then came the Trumpverse.

We now live inside a presidency that is everywhere, always, all at once—on billboards, in courtrooms, in statues of gold, in arches of ego, in polls of declining approval, in congressional rebukes, in the permanent fog of self-promotion. The office is no longer a constitutional role. It is a content franchise. The state is no longer an instrument of governance. It is a stage set. The presidency is no longer scarce. It is overproduced.

When everything is Trump, nothing is presidential.

The New York Times described Trump's relentless self-promotion as a cultivated cult of personality, a politics that depends less on persuasion than on saturation.  A golden statue waits for its home, not as a metaphor but as a literal monument to the conversion of public office into private myth.  And when headlines ask whether the president is panicking about his legacy after the Epstein files, pointing to a giant arch erected in his honor, the joke writes itself: the man who said monuments were for losers is now shopping for them wholesale. 

This is not strength. This is brand inflation.

In my earlier essay, Everything Trump, All at Once, I argued that omnipresence devalues authority. When the presidency becomes a multiverse of appearances—every channel, every grievance, every prop—the office loses its texture. The signal-to-noise ratio collapses. The audience ceases to distinguish between state action and self-advertising. The result is not awe. It is fatigue.

Fatigue shows up in the numbers. Approval ratings continue to slide as voters say the president is doing worse than expected.    Optimism about the country has fallen to record lows, a national mood that pairs poorly with a leader who insists that mood can be fixed by building shinier monuments to himself.  And yet, even as approval craters, Republican leaders continue to give him what he wants—an odd arrangement in which the base is told to cheer louder while the broader public quietly leaves the room. 

The spectacle does not stop at optics. It bleeds into policy, where governance becomes another venue for performance. The House vote to disapprove of Trump’s Canada tariffs was not merely a policy disagreement; it was a reminder that even in a party strangled by loyalty, there are moments when institutions push back against the theater.  The vote did not end the show. It interrupted the act. In the Trumpverse, interruptions are treated as sabotage. The plot must continue.

This is where the moral vacuum matters. The Times’ assessment of a presidency organized around absence—absence of restraint, absence of humility, absence of responsibility—lands not as moralism but as diagnosis of Trump's presidency.  When there is no moral center, spectacle becomes the sole organizing principle. The state becomes a camera angle. Policy becomes a prop. Institutions become set pieces that are rearranged to flatter the star.

The comparison with prior presidencies sharpens the point. Where earlier administrations worked within institutional constraints—sometimes clumsily, sometimes controversially—the Trump presidency treats constraints as narrative obstacles to be kicked aside for applause. Emergency powers are not rare tools; they are the stage props he boots into view when the plot needs a jolt. The press is not an adversary to be rebutted; it is a villain to be delegitimized so the audience will boo on cue. Courts are not coequal branches; they are plot devices that either advance the story or must be written out of it.

This is why the cult imagery matters. The statue is not kitsch by accident. It is governance by souvenir. The arch is not architecture; it is preemptive legacy laundering. The relentless self-promotion is not just insecurity; it is a strategy. When the office is stripped of institutional gravity, the leader compensates by multiplying symbols of personal greatness. The more the presidency thins, the thicker the gold leaf gets.

But gold leaf flakes.

The paradox of the Trumpverse is that omnipresence accelerates depreciation. The more Trump's presidency is everywhere, the less it means anywhere. The more the president insists on his own historical stature, the more history notices the vacancy at the center. You can build statues to fill a void. You cannot build legitimacy that way. Legitimacy is earned through restraint, coherence, and outcomes that endure scrutiny under different camera angles.

In a republic that pretends to be bored by monarchs, this is a peculiar spectacle: a leader trying to manufacture permanence in a system designed to limit it. The Founders did not anticipate golden statues. They anticipated men who would confuse themselves with the office. The Constitution’s answer was not better branding. It was limited.

And limits are the one prop the Trumpverse refuses to use.

The presidency need not be everywhere. It needs to be weighty. It does not need statues. It needs standards. It does not need a multiverse of selves. It needs a single, accountable officeholder bound by institutions that bite. When those teeth are dulled by spectacle, the audience may still applaud—but the show is no longer governance. It is a souvenir shop reflecting the vacancy at the center of a presidency propped up by a shrinking minority.

~ Dunneagin