Trump’s handpicked Commission of Fine Arts voted on Thursday to approve a commemorative 24-karat gold coin bearing Trump’s image, brushing aside debate over whether the coin violates American tradition.
It gets even better — the commission also approved a $1 coin that will circulate as currency.
While federal law has prohibited living persons from being depicted on U.S. currency, before he left office in 2021 Trump signed into law the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020, which included new language regarding the U.S. 250th anniversary commemoration coins.
Megan Sullivan, the acting chief in the office of design management at the U.S. Mint, told the panel that the gold coin was being planned not under the newer law of 2020, but under the direction of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Sullivan said the Treasury had not yet decided the size of the coin, but suggested that they would each be worth hundreds of dollars. The panel encouraged her to make them as big as possible, because Trump likes big things.
Sullivan said Trump had personally approved the design.
Many of America’s founders, including George Washington, were fiercely against taking steps that would make its government officials appear like kings, and that included featuring them on the country’s coins. Only a handful of times in history have people been featured on U.S. currency while they were alive.
Last month the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which is statutorily required to review the themes and designs of coins, declined to review the proposed Trump coins.
The U.S. treasurer Brandon Beach said the advisory committee had several opportunities to review the designs but had declined, and stated, “Accordingly, the Mint’s statutory obligation to seek CCAC review has been fulfilled.”
The coin advisory committee’s chairman, Donald Scarinci, disagreed.
“If the Mint makes these coins without the review of the CCAC, the coins are illegal,” Scarinci said. “Because this is what kings and dictators do and there’s no getting around that,” Mr. Scarinci said. “This is a democracy, not a monarchy, not a dictatorship. And democracies do not put their elected leaders on coins.”