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Day One

So Donald Trump just announced he’s building his presidential library in Miami, Florida. And I have seen the renderings. And let me tell you — it is the most Saddam Hussein, gold-plated ego monument I have ever laid eyes on in my life. We’re talking the kind of building a man commissions when he desperately needs people to remember him. Which, frankly, checks out.

Fine. Let MAGA have their pilgrimage site. When he’s out of office, they can drive down to Miami, stand in line, and worship at the altar of a man who charged the Secret Service $800 a night to sleep at his own hotel. Knock yourselves out.

But I want to talk about something more important. I want to talk about the next president — and what they need to do from the moment they take office. Because the self-worship and institutional damage of the Trump era doesn’t just fade on its own. It has to be deliberately, methodically undone. Not out of revenge. Not out of spite. Out of principle.

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Here is exactly what needs to happen.

The first thing is simple. Remove Donald Trump’s portrait from the White House and restore Joe Biden’s. Trump pulled Biden’s picture down as a petty political gesture on his first day back, and that kind of pettiness has no place in the people’s house. The next president restores it on day one, hour one — because the presidency is not a reality show, and the White House is not a set you redecorate based on who you hate.

Next, every federal building, every government facility, every piece of public infrastructure that had Trump’s name slapped on it by executive decree gets stripped. These buildings belong to the American people. The taxpayers who fund them, the workers who staff them, the communities they serve. They never belonged to Donald Trump. He just acted like they did because nobody stopped him. The next president stops it.

Then, task the Treasury Department — through the normal banking and circulation system — with phasing out every bill signed by Donald Trump and replacing it with clean currency. I know that sounds dramatic. Paper money wears out all the time; the Fed replaces it constantly. This isn’t a mass recall. It’s a deliberate, intentional signal that what was done to our currency — turning it into a vanity project, a collector’s item for sycophants — was not normal and will not be preserved. Money is a symbol of collective trust. You don’t get to sign your name across collective trust and keep it there forever.

The Department of Justice needs to be tasked with something almost revolutionary by recent standards: enforcing the Constitution on powerful people. Any willful, documented violation — regardless of party, regardless of title — gets investigated. Gets prosecuted if the evidence warrants it. Within the clear, established lines of the law. With due process. With full transparency. Not retribution. Accountability. The message to every future senator, cabinet member, general, and billionaire with a government contract must be unmistakable: power comes with responsibility, and in this country, no one is above the law. That’s not a political statement. That’s the entire foundation this country is built on. We just need someone with the courage to actually mean it.

The State Department needs to form a dedicated committee with one mission: investigate every foreign government that engaged in financial dealings with the Trump family or associates during his time in office. Because here’s what the world learned over the last four years — if you want to influence American foreign policy, just book a few hundred rooms at a Trump hotel. Invest in a Trump Tower. Fast-track a trademark. Or, as it turns out, give the President of the United States a $400 million luxury jet. Let’s not even start on the Crypto scam…I don’t have enough room here.

Let’s talk about that jet. Qatar gave Donald Trump a Boeing 747 so lavishly upgraded that the American taxpayer is now being asked to spend one billion dollars to convert it into Air Force One. One billion dollars. And Trump reportedly intends to take it with him when he leaves office — a gift from a foreign government, subsidized by American tax dollars, just his. Because why not. The next president declares on day one that this aircraft is the property of the American people, full stop. It gets reclaimed, and it either gets sold with the proceeds returned to the Treasury, or it gets scrapped. A foreign government cannot give the American president a $400 million jet. That’s not a gift. That’s a down payment on influence. And we are not for sale. Any country that thought it could bribe its way into shaping American foreign policy will face consequences — diplomatic, financial, and legal where the evidence supports it.

Any highway bearing his name, gone. Any landmark, bridge, tunnel, airport, or plaza attached to his name through political pressure rather than legitimate honor, stripped. Any executive order that violated constitutional norms, reviewed and reversed. Any agency that was gutted or repurposed to serve personal political ends, investigated and restored. Any inspector general fired for doing their job, their cases reopened. Any career civil servant pushed out or blacklisted for refusing to break the law, given the chance to come back. This is what restoration looks like — not theater, not spectacle, but methodical, principled, relentless work.

None of this is about anger.

It is not about malice. It is not about revenge. I genuinely do not want his supporters to suffer. I don’t want America to spend the next four years consumed by the past.

But here is the cold, hard truth about why all of this still has to happen: a country where the rules only apply to some people is not a country. It’s a racket. If you are a working-class American who plays by the rules — pays your taxes, doesn’t bribe anybody, doesn’t steal, doesn’t cheat — and you watch the most powerful man in the country do all of those things and face zero consequences, what does that tell you about the system you’ve been faithfully working within your whole life? It tells you it’s rigged. It tells you the game was never fair. It tells you that hard work is for suckers and connections are everything.

That cynicism is the real damage Trump has done to this country. Not any single policy. Not any single scandal. The slow, creeping, suffocating belief that the rules don’t matter, the powerful always win, and nothing ever changes. You don’t fight that cynicism with speeches or hope posters. You fight it by actually holding powerful people accountable — publicly, transparently, by the book. You erase the monuments to self-worship. You restore the institutions. You send the message to Americans, to the world, and to every future president: this office is a trust, not a throne.

We don’t do this to punish Trump. We do it because principle has to mean something.

And then we move on. We use him as the cautionary tale he is. We teach his presidency in civics classes as a stress test the system barely survived. We look our kids in the eye and say: we saw what happens when we forget our values, and we found our way back. We will not build a monument to him. We will not obsess over him. We will simply, quietly, methodically erase him — not from history, because you can’t erase history, but from the public square. From the buildings and the money and the highways and the halls of power.

And in his place, we put something better. The idea — radical, stubborn, and beautiful — that in this country, no one is above the law. Not even the President of the United States. Especially not the President of the United States.

We built this country once. We can restore it again

https://open.substack.com/pub/adamkinzinger/p/day-...

As usual, Kinzinger is talking sense. All of those things need to be done.

But they aren't enough. They won't stop another future President from doing exactly the same things. They simply reverse what Trump did.

There needs to be some concrete legislation. Does the Emoluments Clause need some enabling legislation to make it enforceable? Write that legislation. Does the traditional separation between the President and the DOJ need to be formalized? Write that legislation. Do we need a constitutional amendment? Write it and get it going. Do we need to overturn the USSC decision on Presidential immunity? Write that legislation.

What Trump has proved is that we have lots of guardrails in our system of government. But many of those guardrails can be smashed through by a President determined to ignore them. We need stronger guardrails. And that means some new laws - laws that formalize the restraints on the Presidency that have only been voluntarily heeded by the gentlemen who have occupied the office before Trump.

Trump may not be the last bully to occupy the Presidency. If we survive this current Presidency - which I do not take as a given. So the guardrails on Presidential power need to be strengthened and expanded.

And we simply can't forget that all of his lieutenants need to be investigated and prosecuted as appropriate. They lack immunity, but might be afforded a Presidential pardon on the way out the door. Even if pardoned, they still need to be investigated so that the whole truth of the Trump Presidencies can be known. (There's more potential legislation or constitutional amendment - limits on the President's pardon power. I'd suggest not until after a conviction, so no pre-emptive pardons.)

To summarize, I agree with Kinzinger, but feel his ideas are just the beginning of the actions that need to be taken.

--Peter

Stop quoting irrelevant, political failures like Kinzinger. The only reason you're quoting him is because he hates Trump and this crap shows up in your facebook feed with the beyond-weird Heather Cox Richardson. You can't honestly say you had ever heard of Heather Cox Richardson prior to maybe 2 or 3 years ago, right? She's totally a creation of those who support the far left agenda she's pushing.

In any event, Kinzinger's thanks from the Democrats for being a turncoat to the Republican Party was that they redistricted his former Congressional District out of existence.

He has name value and he's prostituted himself completely, his opinions are biased and have no value.

Stop regurgitating this stuff by the pantsload and start thinking for yourself.

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