Russell Riley, co-director of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, confirmed in an email that there is no precedent for Trump’s vanity. “These kinds of honors have always been bestowed after leaving office. Culturally, it was considered inappropriate in the United States for a president to honor himself in this way; the primary value of such tributes used to lie in the fact that his fellow citizens understood that his service deserved to be remembered forever by naming important institutions or places after him,” Riley explains.
Russell Riley
