Putting Donald Trump’s image on a $250 bill is not only illegal, but there’s something about it that the president may view as worse: his hair looks terrible.
That’s according to Gretchen Carlson, one of the CNN panelists who weighed in on the Treasury Department’s mock-up of a Trump $250 bill to commemorate the country’s independence 250 years ago.
“I would think Trump would be very upset with his hair‚” Carlson, the journalist and former Fox News anchor, said of the prototype that two of Trump’s appointees in the Treasury pushed the Bureau of Printing and Engraving to create.
“It’s usually perfectly coiffed,” she added, “I think he would not choose this photo.”
Carlson went on to say that the concept may have resulted from one of Trump’s Cabinet members fawning over him, as they have been known to do.
“Probably somebody thought of this to earn a good deed from Trump. Like, ‘Hey, you should be on the $250 bill, and… probably how this all started,” Carlson said, adding that Trump may not have been concerned about the legality of it.
“I don’t think the president thought about the fact that Congress would have to approve this,” she said.
In 1866, Congress passed a law stating that “no portrait or likeness of any living person shall be engraved or placed upon any of the bonds, securities, notes, or postal currency of the United States.”
A Republican effort to override that law was introduced last year by South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson, but awaits action.
Carlson said Trump may have caused himself some problems in that regard by alienating some key Republicans in Congress.
“Now you get to a point where he is angering Republicans that he has ousted,” she said, naming Sens. Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and John Cornyn. “They are not going to vote for this.”
At Thursday’s White House press briefing, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was questioned about the legality and the optics of Trump’s image on money.
“We prepare for everything if it gets passed,” he said. “I don’t think that there’s anything untoward about having the President of the United States… on a 250th anniversary bill."
Meanwhile, the administration is taking full advantage of the fact that the law allows the president’s likeness to appear inside U.S. passports.
Other vanity projects include commemorative gold coins, a triumphal arch across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial, and attaching his name to the exterior of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
Additionally, the administration replaced an image of Glacier National Park with Trump’s portrait on national parks access passes.
