Trump’s $250 Greenback Is a Gift to the Criminal Class

Now Trump wants to create a new $250 denomination that we’ll call (in loving memory of the late Ivana Trump) the Donald. If the Benjamin is a currency for criminals, simple arithmetic tells us the Donald is two and a half times more so. After the Post piece appeared the Treasury department said that its planning was of course contingent on congressional passage of a bill that Republican Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina very fawningly introduced in February 2025. According to both the bill and the Treasury department, the Donald would be a “commemorative note.” But Wilson’s bill doesn’t stipulate how many of these notes the Treasury would print, and there’s no custom to follow because until now the federal government hasn’t issued commemorative greenbacks. It’s issued commemorative coins, adding to the face value a surcharge proportionate to the denomination, so that a commemorative half-dollar coin, for instance, might sell for $5.50, a commemorative $1 coin for $11, and a commemorative $5 coin for $40. 

If the Trump Treasury followed that formula, then a commemorative $250 greenback would sell for perhaps $750 and there would be pitifully few takers, even among criminals. But I seriously doubt the president will allow his precious Donald to become some obscure collector’s item. My guess is that in the end Trump will eschew surcharges, eschew numeric limits, and print a maximum number of Donalds, because the whole point is to spread his ugly mug far and wide. If I’m right, then criminals will have plenty of use for the Donald.

Might that prospect deter our president? Of course not. Trump is already getting rich off crypto, another favored vehicle for criminal activity, and he’s pardoning cybercriminals and other white collar scofflaws left and right. Trump is a convicted felon himself! Those banners featuring Trump’s scowling portrait that hang outside the Justice, Labor, and Agriculture departments?  They’re inspired by, and for all I know are directly copied from, a mug shot taken when Trump got indicted three years ago for racketeering in Georgia. (Two years later, the prosecutor dismissed that case because “There is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial.”) You can’t insult a person by saying he gives aid and comfort to criminals when that person compares himself to “the late, great” Al Capone. The convenience of a $250 bill for the criminal underworld isn’t a bug in Trump’s semiquincentennial celebration; it’s a feature. Happy birthday, America, Let’s try to do better in 2276.