The Strangeness of a Trumpified Capital

Photographs and videos by Carolyn Van Houten Strolling through the capital these days, you can’t go far without encountering an image of the president’s face. It drapes down over the front of the Department of Labor building, and peeks out from behind the trees that cluster at the entrance to the Department of Justice. What is the expression playing out on his lips, magnified to a hundred times their actual size? There is something of a Mona Lisa quality to this particular photo of Donald Trump. He could be scowling, or maybe slyly smiling. His glowering eyes, though, are less enigmatic; they seem to follow the pedestrians scurrying around the city from above. 

Carolyn Van Houten for The Atlantic The U.S. Department of Labor building, where Trump shares face time with Theodore Roosevelt

Carolyn Van Houten for The Atlantic The U.S. Institute of Peace, stamped with a new name

The rollout of these banners, and the placement of Trump’s name in front of those of institutions such as the Kennedy Center and the Institute of Peace, continue the president’s long history of shameless branding (see: products as varied as Trump steaks and Trump University). Except in this case the brand is being emblazoned on federal institutions that Trump himself does not own—for example, the Department of Agriculture. Last May, a 31-foot banner with that same brooding portrait hung (temporarily) down the side of the USDA building next to one depicting Abraham Lincoln, who established the department. The display, accompanied by the motto Growing America Since 1862, reportedly cost taxpayers $16,400. The festooning of his face and name all over D.C. might be Trump’s personal way of compensating for the disappearance of his name from New York City projects—including a golf course, skating rinks, and a number of buildings—but it is also consistent with a predilection common among authoritarian leaders. You don’t need to equate Trump with Joseph Stalin or Mao Zedong to recognize a shared desire to loom over their citizens from a variety of public places. In the Soviet Union, Stalin’s portrait was everywhere, from the public square to the “red corner” in people’s homes. These pictures had the sacred quality of religious icons. In his book The Stalin Cult, the historian Jan Plamper described a group of students, including some World War II veterans, who flipped the Stalin poster in their dorm to face the wall before talking candidly about their wartime experience. The image of the leader was meant to inspire fear and reverence, to appear simultaneously distant and omnipresent—a remote father figure whose gaze could not be escaped.

Trump stares out from a corner of the headquarters of the Department of Justice.

Carolyn Van Houten for The Atlantic The Kennedy Center has undergone a leadership shake-up and a name change, and soon faces a two-year closure.

Authoritarian leaders want their face in your face. Their ubiquitous images personalize the state, making it synonymous with one man’s power. And they turn the citizen’s relationship with that leader into an emotional one. Mao had the Mona Lisa thing down well. In the 20-foot-tall portrait that still hangs over the gate to Tiananmen Square, he seems to be smiling in a way that could seem kindly, but also menacing, or at the very least projecting the kind of watchfulness that seems like a threat.  Adulation and fear are not the only goals. To me, the everywhere portrait also seems intended to create a sense, through repetition, that the leader is an organic, immutable part of the landscape. A truism among brand consultants is that for a campaign to be effective, a potential consumer needs to see the same slogan or hear the same jingle multiple times until it feels almost natural—what other soap or cereal could you possibly buy? What other president could you imagine than the one whose gigantic face is everywhere? 

Carolyn Van Houten for The Atlantic He could be scowling, or maybe slyly smiling. His glowering eyes are less enigmatic; they seem to follow the pedestrians scurrying around the city from above.