I don’t know how closely you look at those few paper bills floating around in your wallet. Cash hasn’t been the most convenient payment option for a long time, and it’s even less favorable these days considering the Donald Trump-induced demise of the penny, which prompted many merchants to round transactions by a few cents for those paying with cash.
If you were to closely scrutinize a U.S. banknote, however, right now you would come across two signatures: those of the Treasury Secretary and the Treasurer. If you have bills printed far enough back in time, you could compare the relatively legible signatures of some of the more recent holders of those offices, and the inscrutable scribbles of others.
Opus 2 Steps Up Its AI Game With Acquisition Of A Legal Tech Startup
With the addition of Uncover’s technology, the litigation software is delivering rapid innovation.
It has been this way for 165 years. Yet, despite how he claims to care so deeply about history and tradition whenever he’s attempting to preserve a statue of some racist he just learned about the existence of, President Trump does not actually give one sh*t about history, tradition, or good taste.
In yet another unprecedented (some might say demented) move intended to fan the dictatorial flames of a sitting president’s massive ego, Trump’s jagged, thirsty signature is going to adorn U.S. paper currency. The Treasury Department also intends to drop the signature of the U.S. Treasurer, a first since greenbacks were originally introduced in 1861.
Trump, while he does still head an ever-shrinking cult of irrationally devoted supporters, is probably the most loathed president in United States history. Some outraged citizens claim that they will refuse to use any paper currency bearing Trump’s signature.
Personally, I believe large-scale resistance to Trump-signed paper money is going to take a different form. Remember when he slapped his disgusting glowering mug on this year’s annual National Parks passes right next to a portrait of George Washington like a total f*cking lunatic? Well, it took no time at all for people to start distributing custom stickers fit to go right over Trump’s stupid face, or to just color over it with a Sharpie. The Trump administration then scrambled to try to force the hardworking NPS rangers it had treated like a mass of human garbage during its DOGE campaign to disallow people who’d already paid for their passes from using them to get into National Parks if they’d covered the Trump photo.
What Even Is AI ‘Competence’? It Depends.
Takeaways from a Legalweek panel on evolving malpractice risks.
Well, the Trump picture on the National Parks pass went over like a fart in church, and it seems to me that the Trump signature on paper money is even more ill-conceived. How long do you think it’s going to take for someone to start selling a desktop stamp that allows a person to stamp every single Trump-signed bill they come across to read “Donald J. Trump protects pedophiles” in his own dopey handwriting so it looks like he wrote it himself?
I should note that anyone who “mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates” a banknote with intent to render it unfit for reissue (the intent part’s important) commits a crime, and I am certainly not advocating for anyone to do anything like that. That being said, it actually isn’t against the law to harmlessly write, draw, or doodle in a small space on your paper currency as long as you’re not putting an advertisement on it. Plus, unlike with a National Parks pass that is issued to and tied to an individual person, cash changes hands a lot. It would be very easy for anyone with a modified bill to claim it came to them that way in a legitimate cash transaction.
The possibilities are endless, and I frankly can’t wait to see what people come up with. The first Trump-signed hundred dollar bills are supposedly going to be printed in June, with other denominations to follow, though keep in mind that his ballroom is still a crater in the ground where the East Wing of the White House used to be, Iran is far from fully defeated, and we’re still waiting on that wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for in his first term.
Folks, Trump turns 80 in June, just in time for his new $100 bills to drop. Hard to believe though it is, everything is only going to keep getting even stupider from here. Hopefully at least we can all get a few lolz out of this one.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].