Maddow Blog | As Trump and his allies look to rename airport, Dems eye counteroffer

Steve Benen
Updated ·2 min read
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A generation after Republicans renamed the key airport in the Washington area, a different group of GOP lawmakers set their sights on the city’s other airport. Under an actual piece of pending legislation (H.R. 7845), Washington Dulles International Airport would be renamed the Donald J. Trump International Airport.

Initially, the former president said very little about this. But as a Washington Post report noted last week, that silence didn’t last.

In fact, after the former president published a couple of items to his social media platform last Wednesday, he added a couple more on Friday, including one in which Trump said it would be “such a great honor” if Congress agreed to rename Dulles after him.

In other words, this story has reached Mar-a-Lago — and the presumptive GOP nominee is on board with the idea.

That same afternoon, three more House Republicans — New York’s Claudia Tenney, South Carolina’s William Timmons, and Virginia’s Bob Good — signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation, joining the bill’s original six champions. (One of the sextet, Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, said last week that one of the goals of his bill was to “put it in their face.” He didn’t say who “they” were.)

No one should be surprised if this list of co-sponsors grows, especially now that Trump has effectively endorsed the effort.

As for congressional Democrats, NBC News reported that while they’re unlikely to change Dulles’ name, they do have a counterproposal in mind.

“When our Republican colleagues introduced their bill to rename Dulles after Donald Trump, I said the more fitting option would be to rename a federal prison,” Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia said in a statement. “I hope our Republican friends will join us in bestowing upon Donald J. Trump the only honor he truly deserves.”

Reps. Jared Moskowitz of Florida and John Garamendi of California are the other two Democratic co-sponsors of this actual bill.

Obviously, neither proposal will become law anytime soon, though it remains easy to imagine the former president seizing on the Dulles bill, investing time and energy into the idea, and making it a litmus-test issue for his congressional allies.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com