STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
President Trump is putting his name on the currency. The Treasury Department confirmed that future paper bills will have Trump's signature. Aidan McLaughlin is the Washington correspondent for Vanity Fair and broke this story. He's on the line. Good morning.
AIDAN MCLAUGHLIN: Good morning.
INSKEEP: OK. So I've got a $10 bill here. Pulled it out of my wallet. It's a few years old. It's got the secretary of the Treasury signature in the lower right-hand corner. Is that where Trump's signature is going to go?
MCLAUGHLIN: So there are two signatures currently on U.S. bills, and those two signatures have been on these bills for 165 years.
INSKEEP: Oh, I see the other one on the left side. OK. Go on. Go on.
MCLAUGHLIN: You've got the treasurer and the Treasury secretary. And the treasurer, Brandon Beach, his signature is going to be replaced by Trump's. So Trump's is going to sit beside Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's.
INSKEEP: OK. So sit - so on this $10 bill, it'll be on the left-hand side, is where it would be. OK. And is this legal to put a sitting president's signature on the currency?
MCLAUGHLIN: Yes. So as far as the Treasury Department is concerned, the changing of signatures is actually quite routine. It happens anytime there's a change of administration, and the administration appoints a new treasurer and a new Treasury secretary. So it's not actually something that requires congressional approval or the passage of a law. The notes are updated with new appointees in every run, so it's up to the Treasury Department to make that call when the new signatures go on the notes.
INSKEEP: OK. But...
MCLAUGHLIN: It's just unprecedented, yeah.
INSKEEP: I was going to say. I mean, did Franklin Roosevelt do this? Did Abraham Lincoln do this? The answer is no?
MCLAUGHLIN: No. So it's a completely unprecedented step for a president to put his signature on the notes. I mean, you know, George Washington once said that only kings put their faces on coins, and the founders spoke a lot about how corrosive this kind of Caesarism was to the, you know, idea of the American project. So it is totally unprecedented. But the only thing stopping a president from doing something like this is, you know, I guess, a fealty to those American ideals.
INSKEEP: OK. And I was actually looking around at other currency. The reference to kings seems adequate. The British have their King Charles on the currency - and until recently, Queen Elizabeth. But other countries are a little more modest. I just picked a couple at random. China and North Korea, neither of them puts their absolute leader on the currency. They go for the founder of the communist republics in those cases. I guess Trump hasn't gone to the extent of trying to put his face on the currency yet, though.
MCLAUGHLIN: Well, so putting your face on the currency, that's when things get legally stickier. There are - there is a statute that currency needs to bear the faces of presidents or leaders who are not alive. Certainly a sitting president, I don't believe the law would allow them to put their face on currency. But, yeah, it's never been part of American political tradition. And it's definitely closer to what we might expect from, you know, cult of personality strongmen - Saddam Hussein, who put his head on dinar banknotes in Iraq. But Trump is not averse to that kind of thing in the same way that his predecessors have been.
INSKEEP: How did your sources explain the thinking behind this and whether there was any debate about it?
MCLAUGHLIN: So any time that I've spoken to sources that are close to Trump are within the administration, and I spoke to a few for this piece, Trump cares deeply about his legacy now, and he has three years left in office, and he's doing everything he can to leave his stamp on Washington and on the country. It - this explains why he demolished the East Wing to build a large ballroom.
And it's how people like Lindsey Graham, when they were advocating for war with Iran, made appeals to Trump's legacy. So putting his name on currency, regardless of the precedent, is the latest in a long line of actions like this to cement that legacy, and I believe that's how he was thinking about it when he made this decision.
INSKEEP: Aidan McLaughlin of Vanity Fair. Thanks so much for your insights.
MCLAUGHLIN: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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