Committee recoils as Trump’s co-panel decides if his face goes on 'illegal' coin

Last week, reports revealed the U.S. government has redesigned the Great Seal of the United States to use on the dime for the country's 250th birthday. And on Thursday, coin aficionados are set to commence the next great coin debate: whether President Donald Trump will get his own official U.S. government gold coin.

The Washington Post reported that the Commission of Fine Arts will meet Thursday and decide whether to approve a 24-carat gold coin showing the president leaning on a desk. As the report notes, every member of the committee was nominated by Trump.

In the past year, Trump has made vast strides to leave his mark on Washington D.C., including tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a monstrous ballroom and planning to build the Arch de Trump — a large arch resembling the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. More recently, Trump appointed his own board to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and had them vote to add his name to the building.
The coins, typically sold for several thousand dollars, would be made available at a time when the economy is taking a serious hit, and families are struggling to afford housing, fuel and groceries.

The barrier might come when the coin has to go before the second panel of deciders, a bipartisan Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, which last month refused to consider Trump's gold coin

"In interviews, members opposed putting a sitting president on currency, saying it would break with democratic norms and reek of subservience to royalty," the report said.

It would also break with the laws that mandate someone be dead before they go on currency.

Republican coin collector Michael Moran, who was appointed to the panel by by former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said, “It’s wrong. It goes against American culture and the traditions that drive what we put on our coinage. I didn’t sign up for this."

The Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee includes people who regularly collect coins, along with a historian and an artist specializing in medallic arts.

Retired basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was once on the committee; he's an avid coin collector. He said he was disheartened by the Trump coin, the Post reported. "He believed well-designed coins could inform and inspire. He cited as examples a 1998 silver dollar that honored Crispus Attucks, who was enslaved, escaped and was killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770, and a 2017 gold coin that depicted Lady Liberty as an African American woman."

“I’m not enthusiastic about memorializing Mr. Trump on a coin because he has done so much damage to our country,” said Abdul-Jabbar. “It takes a huge consensus to get agreement on something like this, and I’m not inclined to be supportive of the president’s request.”

Last year, the commission approved a $1 Trump coin, which Democrats tried to stop.

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Navada) called it "embarrassing."

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Or.) added, “Monarchs and dictators put their faces on coins, not leaders of a democracy."

A 2005 law restricts presidents from appearing on a $1 coin unless they are dead. Trump is getting around the law by making it a "gold coin."

“They can definitely make the coin without our review. But it would be an illegal coin,” said Donald Scarinci, a Democratic appointee on the committee. “It’s not about Donald Trump. It’s about whoever the president is. It’s not something done in a democracy.”

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