With Donald Trump’s name now affixed to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the question naturally arises: What comes next in the president’s accelerating effort to fuse his brand with America’s most hallowed civic symbols in the nation’s capital? History, after all, is not something to be inherited—rather, in the age of Trump, it is something to be acquired.

Designer and visual commentator Doug Fast, whose work includes logos for Starbucks, Panera, and New Balance, began pondering this question months ago with pencil sketches imagining the Washington Monument repurposed as Trump’s final resting place. In Fast’s drawings, the familiar obelisk sprouts a Lenin-style mausoleum at its base.

Pencil sketch: Washington Monument with Lenin-style mausoleum base.

Now, armed with Google Gemini, an AI image-generation tool, Fast has elevated those speculative doodles into disturbingly plausible visions. His images provoke a peculiar kind of double take: laughter and nausea (or both in rapid succession). At the risk of offering the 47th president fresh inspirations, we present this visual essay not as expressions of collective memory and shared values, but as exercises in unrestrained self-aggrandizement.

The Washington Monument: A Spire Too Tall to Ignore

As the second-tallest structure in the otherwise low-slung city of Washington, D.C., the Washington Monument was Fast’s obvious starting point. Its verticality would make it irresistible to a man who sees height, size, and sheer dominance as guiding principles.

Fast’s first approach might be described as a “mine is bigger than yours” strategy. In these variations, the existing obelisk is overwhelmed by an adjacent megastructure, casting the original monument into architectural submission.

Two variations in which Trumpian mass eclipses the original Washington Monument.

A second approach builds on Fast’s original sketches by modifying the monument at ground level. In one version, oversized capital letters conceal an underground mausoleum embedded at the monument’s base. In another, a stately mausoleum anchors the tower.

A third variation incorporates the mausoleum below and a Trump likeness above. Perched at the summit of the monument, Trump’s bust looms at a height best appreciated by visitors to the nation’s capital arriving by air. The pyramidal form of the original monument is preserved, but mostly to expand the president’s range of headgear. The resulting silhouette introduces a distinctive “dunce-cap” vibe—part pharaoh, part reality TV cautionary tale.

Monument with mausoleum and Trump bust (detail at right).

Classical Restraint or Maximum Gilding? The Eternal Question.

Inside the mausoleum, interior design choices will no doubt preoccupy the departed chief executive for all eternity. Should the space be white, classical, and angelic? Or should it embrace the rich gold accents and deep wood tones of a luxury resort lobby? Because it’s going to last a very long time, the afterlife for Trump demands options.

Mausoleum interiors: two options for the ages.

Other Monuments, Other Opportunities

Meanwhile, the Lincoln Memorial, another beloved monument, provides an ideal setting for Trump’s next legacy makeover. Here, the president can finally memorialize his conviction that he would have surpassed Honest Abe, cutting an artful deal to prevent the Civil War and resolving the matter of chattel slavery peacefully, efficiently, and with far better ratings.

Revised Lincoln Memorial: seated authority traded for today’s power brand.

The U.S. Capitol rotunda seems a suitable locale for a gold-sheathed likeness of Trump. Here, Fast imagines a gift from the executive branch to the legislative, commemorating Trump’s third-term executive order formally ending the separation of powers—a wasteful and fraud-inducing practice, if ever there was one.

Gold Trump statue, U.S. Capitol rotunda.

MAGA Merch Deserves Its Own Monument

On the subject of Trump-approved headgear, it is worth noting that the president’s beloved MAGA hat will receive its own standalone monument. Located across from the Capitol, it marks the spot where hundreds of MAGA “patriots” forcibly entered the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021, on what Trump has repeatedly described as a “day of love.”

MAGA Hat Memorial, scale adjusted for historical accuracy.

Correcting the Historical Record

An important function of monumental statuary is, of course, setting the historical record straight. To that end, Trump’s legacy appropriation campaign offers much-needed relief from the scourge of fake news. In Fast’s revised Iwo Jima memorial, careful observers will note that the lead soldier—equipped only with “helmet hair,” not an actual helmet—exhibits uncommon bravery. Breaking the space-time continuum, he leads the nation at a crucial turning point in World War II.

Revised Iwo Jima Memorial.

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Trump’s name is carved in oversized letters beneath a bas-relief of his head, finally putting to rest erroneous accounts of his avoidance of service due to bone spurs. An additional feature—unseen in the image—is a quote carved in stone from Trump’s appearance on The Howard Stern Show, in which he compared the risks of sexually transmitted diseases while dating in the 1980s to combat, calling it his “own personal Vietnam.” History, once corrected, hopefully will stay that way—at least for Trump.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial, updated.

Beyond Branding

For Trump, monuments commemorating past presidents, American wars, and other civic icons function less as sites of remembrance than as structural substrates: raw materials awaiting revision, expansion, and unapologetic gilding. Historical stature is not accrued through time, sacrifice, or collective memory, but installed: underwritten by wealthy donors, scaled for maximum dominance, branded in oversized lettering, and polished to a mirror sheen that faithfully reflects power back at its owner.

All images created by Doug Fast.