President Trump set the Beltway buzzing again this week after draping the Department of Labor building in a monumental banner promoting — himself. Trump’s scowling visage now hangs three stories tall above a caption touting “AMERICAN WORKERS FIRST.”

The banner joins a similar one at the USDA and his recent takeovers of cultural institutions like the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Institution as the most visible efforts yet to make Trump’s name and image indistinguishable from the idea of the U.S. government itself. For millions of MAGA voters, Trump has become the physical embodiment of American renewal. And what’s wrong with a little hero worship, after all?

Trump’s allies argue that the cultural backlash to rebranding Washington in his image is nothing more than leftist Trump Derangement Syndrome. Experts on authoritarianism compare it to the visual propaganda of strongmen like Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and North Korea’s deified leader Kim Il Sung. What you see........

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