As a real estate developer, Donald Trump built his empire on ostentatious displays of wealth, substantial tax breaks – and lots of free publicity. As president, he has deployed the power of the state to expand his personal brand, adding his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the US Institute of Peace, a class of new navy warships, and even investment accounts for millions of children.

Trump is now eyeing yet more grandiose targets in his self-aggrandizement spree. He wants Congress to rename New York’s Penn Station and Washington Dulles international airport in his honor. But there’s a catch: Trump reportedly told Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, that he would unfreeze billions of dollars in federal funding for a major infrastructure project in the north-east – if Schumer supported renaming the two sites.

The president seemingly threatened to hold federal funding, which had already been approved by Congress, hostage in his relentless campaign of self-promotion. Even by the standards that Trump set after a year back in the White House, when he has systematically dismantled anti-corruption laws built over decades and used the presidency to enrich himself and his family, trading naming rights as a political favor is a new low. Trump appears to have tried to leverage a $16bn transportation project to build a rail tunnel under the Hudson River, connecting New York and New Jersey, for his personal glorification.

Over the past few weeks, Trump and his aides offered shifting explanations regarding whether he sought to extract naming rights in exchange for restoring federal funds – and why the administration had suspended the project’s funding in the first place.

After reports of the quid pro quo surfaced this month, Trump said it was Schumer who had suggested renaming Penn Station after the president – a claim that the New York Democrat quickly denied as an “absolute lie”. On 10 February, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, contradicted........

© The Guardian