Letters to the Editor | May 8, 2026
Inquirer readers on President Trump’s erratic behavior and his penchant for attaching his name to public property.
A worried American
After Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27, 2024, then-U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick stated the next day on KDKA radio that “as an American, put aside politics for a second, we should be worried,” and went on to urge Biden’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, in which a president can be removed from office if they are unable to carry out their duties. In July, McCormick continued to press the case for the 25th Amendment.
Every day, Donald Trump’s impairments seem to come into clearer focus as he putters around Washington, D.C. Yet, while the president tears down buildings, hangs his picture everywhere there is a famous building with a blank wall, wreaks havoc domestically and internationally, spends millions of our tax dollars to persecute those he perceives as his political enemies, starts wars without congressional approval, posts sacrilegious pictures of himself, rage-posts all night, then sleeps during public events during the day, McCormick has been strangely silent.
Sen. McCormick, as an American, I am worried.
The good news is that Sen. McCormick no longer has to plead from the sidelines for someone to do their job. It’s time for Dave McCormick to do his job.
Lorette Lefebvre, King of Prussia
Public selfies
Most presidents have big egos and are confident that the policies they pursue while in office are best for the lives of individual citizens and for the country’s prosperity; their actions and policies will establish how history remembers them. However, when a president needs to attach their name or likeness to buildings like a performing arts center, to coinage and paper currency, and to national park passes — all of which are public property — they reveal a remarkable fear of being soon forgotten for having done nothing, ingrained in the national legacy.
We have an Interstate Highway System, not an Eisenhower Highway System; our country’s land area was doubled by the Louisiana Purchase, not the Jefferson Real Estate Deal; Alaska was not named the Andrew Johnson Gold Lode; the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe after World War II was not named the Mighty Truman Rescue Plan; the Grand Canyon not preserved for posterity’s enjoyment as the Grand Roosevelt Canyon. Abe Lincoln did not rename the United States of America as the Lincoln Republic after he restored it from being split into two separate nations.
Places named for presidents exist. The Hoover Dam, Reagan International Airport, the Eisenhower Lock on the St. Lawrence Seaway, and many Kennedy structures were all named to honor those presidents (and some renamed) after they left office. None of them asked for those locations to be named for them. (And a reminder for our MAGA friends: It was Republican lawmakers who coined the name Obamacare — which carried a derogatory connotation — for the Affordable Care Act.) We might say that a president naming public property or actions after themself is a great big beautiful public selfie.
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