Given a day, this could have been taken as a joke. And yet…
Tuesday, April 2, a Republican representative in Congress, Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania, announced in a press release that he had introduced a bill aimed at renaming Dulles International Airport in the greater Washington region, in the name of the former president and Republican candidate for the next presidential election, Donald Trump.
The elected official and populist supporter wants the Virginia airport area, located 40 km from the city center of the American capital and named in honor of John Foster Dulles, former Secretary of State under Eisenhower, to become in the future Donald J. Trump International Airport.
“Our nation has never been greater than under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump,” the elected official declared to justify his bill. “For the millions of domestic and international travelers who pass through the airport, there is no better symbol of freedom, prosperity and strength than hearing ‘Welcome to Trump International Airport’ as they land on American soil. »
Several other Republican representatives, including Paul Gosar of Arizona, Mike Waltz of Florida and Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee have given their support to this approach which could benefit from the majority of Donald Trump’s party in the House of Representatives to be adopted.
On Fox News, Alabama Republican Rep. Barry Moore, who supports the name change, noted that in 1998, Congress voted to rename Washington National Airport in honor of the former president, Ronald Reagan. “It is only fitting that we do the same for another of our greatest presidents, Donald J. Trump […] who fights for Americans like us. »
The Democratic majority in the Senate, however, only suggests a very short life expectancy for this bill.
With nearly seven months until the November presidential vote, Donald Trump now faces 88 counts in four separate cases, including attempting to overturn the outcome of the 2020 election, election interference in Georgia, and falsifying business records to cover up a history of adultery and mishandling of secret documents after leaving the White House.
This series of indictments makes him the first ex-president in the history of the United States to be criminally charged.
On the X network, the Democratic representative from Virginia, Gerry Connolly, whose constituency includes part of Dulles Airport, mocked this toponymic project led by a handful of Republicans by recalling the number of accusations weighing on the ex-president. “If Republicans want to name something after him, I suggest they find a federal prison,” he wrote.
Another Democratic representative from Virginia, Jennifer Wexton, also called the bill another illustration of the “lack of seriousness” of radical Republicans in Congress. She reiterated that, of all the issues Americans want their elected officials to address, “renaming an airport in honor of someone who sought to undermine our democracy” is not one of them. she wrote on the same network.