EXCLUSIVE: Trump Is Sticking His Face On YOUR Passport

Summary

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Bulwark Takes – EXCLUSIVE: Trump Is Sticking His Face On YOUR Passport

Podcast: Bulwark Takes
Episode Date: April 29, 2026
Host: Sam Stein
Guest: Ben Parker
Summary By: Bulwark Podcast Summarizer

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Episode Overview

This episode of Bulwark Takes uncovers and analyzes an explosive new story from Bulwark reporters Sam Stein and Ben Parker: the redesign of the U.S. passport to feature Donald Trump’s image. The episode covers the details and unprecedented nature of this move, connects it to other Trump-centric policy changes, and features an inside look at the drama of breaking the story—including the White House's handling of the media leak.

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Key Points & Insights

1. The Passport Redesign: What’s Happening?

[02:36]

• The State Department is redesigning the U.S. passport for the 250th anniversary of American independence.
• The inside cover will feature a scowling Donald Trump portrait (reminiscent of his Atlanta mugshot) and his signature in gold coloring.
• This replaces the classic Americana imagery: previously, Francis Scott Key/The Star-Spangled Banner (inside front) and the Voyager spacecraft (back).
• As Ben Parker explained, “It's gonna be on the passport along with his signature in. What else? Gold. I mean, not actual gold. Like gold color.” [03:11]

Historical Significance:
[03:46]

• The Bulwark team could find no precedent for a U.S. president’s face on a passport—ever. Not in U.S. history, nor in the practice of other countries.
• “It's like this is a new thing. ... The guy, the historian I talked to called it wacky.” (Ben Parker, [04:19])

2. Why Is This Happening?

[03:31]

• Official reasoning: To commemorate America’s 250th anniversary.
• Actual impact: Swapping out universal patriotism (historic American figures, symbols) for a personalist tribute to the president.
• As Sam Stein bluntly put it, “Some might call this narcissism, some might call this insecurity.” [06:16]

3. Broader Trend: Trump Everywhere

[04:40 – 06:07]

• The passport story is just one piece of a growing pattern of self-branding:
  • $1 coin featuring Trump’s face
  • National Park Service passes for the 250th anniversary with his face
  • Trump's signature set to appear on future U.S. currency
  • Huge banners with Trump’s face on federal buildings
  • Prescription drugs portal: trumprx.gov
  • Battleships: "Trump class"
  • His name on government buildings (US Institute of Peace, Kennedy Center)
  • “Trump Gold” and “Platinum” cards for special green-card status (at $1M/$5M)
  • “One big beautiful bill” creating new “Trump accounts” (custodial IRAs)
  • Not to mention, during COVID, all stimulus checks with his signature [06:00]
• “Where do you come down in the psychological spectrum here?” (Stein [06:16])

Notable Quote

“It apparently is not a thing that has happened, like, in the world. Like, it is not a thing countries do—that they put images of their leaders in the passport. ... The historian I talked to called it wacky.”
— Ben Parker [04:19]

4. Political Angle: The Save America/Save Act

[06:23]

• The Save America Act (“Save Act”) being promoted would require proof of citizenship to vote; a passport is accepted proof.
• Most Americans don’t currently have passports, but if this bill passes, millions will need one—displaying Trump’s face as they register to vote.
• Suggests a calculated self-promotion strategy aimed at reinforcing Trump’s personal brand at the ballot box.

“So right now, most Americans don't have a passport, but if this act passes, you're gonna have a lot more people getting passports and then looking at Trump's face right when they go to the ballot box. Coincidence.”
— Ben Parker [06:56]

Comedic Dystopia:
[06:56 – 07:46]
Sam and Ben riff humorously on a future America in which nearly all government interactions (from voting, to banking, to getting medicine) run through Trump-branded systems.

• “You wanna vote, you gotta go get a passport. ...You take it out of your Trump account...you buy your passport which has Donald Trump’s face on it...so you can go and vote. That’s how it’s going to be in future America. Trumpified.” (Sam Stein [06:56-07:34])

5. The White House Media Maneuver & Inside Story Drama

[09:39–14:40]

• Sam and Ben recount their efforts to break the story with integrity—tracking, verifying, and seeking official comments.
• They decided (professionally) to delay publication so the White House and State Department could respond.
• The White House used this heads-up to give an exclusive to Fox News, attempting to scoop The Bulwark with a sanitized, vague version of the story.
  • The Fox piece omitted the image choice (Trump’s face) and unprecedented nature.
  • Bulwark sees this as an abuse of reporter trust—a tactic to minimize criticism and reward friendlier outlets.
  • “Thanks for giving us more time. Thanks for giving us a heads up and a chance to comment. Go F yourself is basically what they said.” (Parker [12:08])
• Key Critique: This sets a lower bar for press relations and discourages outlets from responsibly allowing time for comment in the future.
  • “Congrats to the White House aide who came up with this scheme: you drew more attention to our story…But you just burnt whatever trust we had.” (Stein [13:28])
  • “If they want to build up trust...they shouldn’t do this JV bush league crap.” (Stein [13:12])

6. Call for Tips and Reader Involvement

[15:01]

• The Bulwark encourages whistleblowers to use their tips line for future leaks about administration conduct.
• “We’ll do it ethically and responsibly, but we're not going to, you know, swallow bullshit from the administration.” (Sam Stein [15:11])

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Notable Quotes

• “It's gonna be on the passport along with his signature in. What else? Gold. I mean, not actual gold. Like gold color.” — Ben Parker [03:11]
• “It apparently is not a thing that has happened, like, in the world... The historian I talked to called it wacky.” — Ben Parker [04:19]
• “Some might call this narcissism, some might call this insecurity. Where do you come down in the psychological spectrum here?” — Sam Stein [06:16]
• “So right now, most Americans don't have a passport, but if this act passes, you're gonna have a lot more people getting passports and then looking at Trump's face right when they go to the ballot box.” — Ben Parker [06:56]
• “Congrats to the White House aide who came up with this scheme: you drew more attention to our story... But you just burnt whatever trust we had.” — Sam Stein [13:28]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:36] – Details of the passport redesign revealed
• [03:46] – Discussion of the unprecedented historical nature
• [04:40] – Roundup of other government items branded with Trump’s image
• [06:23] – Psychological and political motivations discussed
• [06:56] – Connection to the Save Act and potential for mass passport issuance
• [09:39] – Inside story: The Bulwark’s reporting process
• [11:51] – Discovery of the White House giving the scoop to Fox News
• [12:41] – Analysis of the media manipulation and White House tactics
• [15:01] – Advice for tipsters and Bulwark’s approach to story leads

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a sharp, critical, and sometimes darkly comedic breakdown of the Trump administration’s push to cement the president’s image—literally—on cornerstone pieces of American identity. The inside-baseball look at media dynamics between the White House and news outlets adds depth and urgency to the scoop. For those interested in the intersection of politics, branding, and government communication ethics, this is a must-listen installment.

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Transcript

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[Sam Stein]

Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein managing at the Bulwark. I'm joined by Ben Parker, who is. Hey, Sam, how do I even want to describe you? Like a Swiss army knife of the Bulwark. Wow.

[Ben Parker]

Thank you.

[Sam Stein]

Managerial capacity, reporter extraordinaire. Today for those reporter occasionaire. Yeah, okay, fine, whatever. Ben's got a hot scoop that we're going to be talking about. It is Donald Trump putting his name and face on something new this time. Your US Passport. If you're getting a new US Passport, renewed US Passport, congratulations. You're. You're going to get one with Trump's face on it. Before we do that and before we dive into it, a sort of programming reminder for everyone who is watching. We got live shows coming up, May 20, May 21, out in San Diego and Los Angeles. Tickets are hot. You gotta get them. Go to Bulwark, the Bulwark.com events for tickets. If you're out in the area, definitely would attend. All right, Ben, let's talk about this thing because I'll, I'll kind of pull back the current a little bit. We were working on this for like a couple weeks, right. Like we got the tip. Like I forget how long ago the tip came in.

[Ben Parker]

Yeah, so we got, we had obviously two sources on the story. Good journalistic etiquette. Right. First one came in a while ago. So we've been kind of waiting on, see if someone else could confirm this for us. That happened pretty quickly. And yeah, you and I've been working on this story sort of last night this morning, kicking it around, seeing, seeing, you know, seeing if we can make it work.

[Sam Stein]

All right, before we get to the drama, because there's actually like, real, like, insidery drama about how the White House and the administration handled this when we went to them for comment, and we'll save that as sort of the dessert for this. Let's talk about the substance here. So what is the actual redesign?

[Ben Parker]

The redesign is of the inside cover of the passport. So this is where normally you get classic sort of, you know, patriotic Americana stuff. Right? Now, if you look, open up your passport. The inside cover has Francis Scott Key and the Star Spangled Banner, and the back cover has the Voyager spacecraft. The new design, which the State Department says is in honor of the 250th anniversary of American independence, is going to have Donald Trump's face. Specifically, it's going to have that, like, one eye cocked, scowling portrait he took right when he was inaugurated.

[Sam Stein]

You got that old Trump. How do you. How do you. How do you describe the face?

[Ben Parker]

Like the scowly. You know, it's, it's. It's Allah. The mug shot he took. Right. Like, it is the same face. A little bit famous. Atlanta mugshot. Yeah. So that's gonna be on the passport along with his signature in. What else? Gold. I mean, not actual gold. Like gold color.

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[Sam Stein]

Why are they doing this?

[Ben Parker]

Their reason is to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America. And I guess the way they want to celebrate it is by replacing, you know, just general patriotic stuff about America with stuff specifically about Donald Trump, which has, as far as we can tell, never been done before.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, we were looking into this. We're trying to figure out if there's ever been a case where a president sitting has put face on a passport. And as far as. I mean, it's. We asked Adam Kuiper, who knows all this, and Adam couldn't recall, but we did reach out to some historians, and we. We couldn't find a case of this. Right.

[Ben Parker]

Yeah. It's so the modern. I mean, passports go back hundreds of years, and, like, these two just be pieces of paper that said, let this person pass whatever, and they would have the signature of the person issuing it, which in this case is actually not the president, it's the Secretary of State or it's the State Department. So it doesn't need to have Trump's signature at all.

[Sam Stein]

But.

[Ben Parker]

But it's. It apparently has not happened in modern history, if ever that a sitting US President had their image in the passport, because there's no reason for it. It apparently is not a thing that has happened, like, in the world. Like, it is not a thing. Countries do that. They put images of their leaders in the passport. It's just not, it's like this is a new thing. It's, it's. The guy, the historian I talked to called it wacky.

[Sam Stein]

Okay. Yeah. Well, it's new with respect to passports, but it's now become sort of old hat for Trump. I'm just going to go through a few things that have been put in with his image on it. There's. And this is just for now. These two are for the 250th anniversary celebration. We're getting a controversial $1 coin with his face on it. We're going to, it's going to be as large as possible. As was said in the release, the National Park Service is going to have park passes with Trump's face on it again for the 250th celebration. That's just for the celebration. This is in your piece as well. Donald Trump's signature is set to appear on future US Currency. Huge banners with his face have appeared on federal buildings. He's created a new website for prescription drugs called trumprx.gov he's announced a new Trump class of battleships. And his name has been placed on both the US Institute of Peace and the John F. Kennedy Memorial center for the Performing Arts. He's also introduced the Trump Gold card and the Trump Platinum card for people willing to shell out 1 million or $5 million for, for sort of green card status here. And then, of course, the one big beautiful bill which signed into law had the creation of a new type of custodial IRA accounts that were dubbed Trump accounts. I don't think we're missing anything, but it's. No, we are.

[Ben Parker]

I just thought of one.

[Sam Stein]

Oh, damn. What do we miss?

[Ben Parker]

Yeah. So I just thought this. Do you remember back during COVID in his first term, he made sure that all the stimulus checks had his signature on.

[Sam Stein]

Yes, I do.

[Ben Parker]

So people got the checks and they said Donald Trump. Even though, like all the rest of the things, they didn't actually need to have his signature. He made sure had the big sharpie on.

[Sam Stein]

Some might call this narcissism, some might call this insecurity. Where do you come down in the psychological spectrum here?

[Ben Parker]

You know, I think there is a. There's a even more nefarious explanation, which it could be all of the above. You actually pointed this out to me as we were working on this piece Donald Trump is also a big proponent of the Save America act, also called the Save Act. It goes by a bunch of different names. There's a bunch of different versions. One of the things it would do is, is require people to prove their citizenship before they can vote. And one of the ways you can do that is with a passport. So right now, most Americans don't have a passport, but if this act passes, you're gonna have a lot more people getting passports and then looking at Trump's face right when they go to the ballot box. Coincidence.

[Sam Stein]

So here's, yeah, here's, here's the future for Americans, okay? You wanna vote, you gotta go get a passport. So you take the money from your Trump account, which you filled with your Trump stimulus check, and you're here on greed card status because you've purchased a Trump platinum card. But you need a little extra cash. So you take it out of your Trump account that you fill with your Trump stimulus check. Then you go down to the reconverted John F. Kennedy Memorial center, now the Trump John F. Kennedy Morris center, which has been reconverted into a passport distribution center, and use that money to buy your passport which has Donald Trump's face on it, so you can go and vote. That's how it's going to be in future America. Trumpified.

[Ben Parker]

And then, and then you go get your cup of coffee and you leave a tip in your enormously large $1 Trump coin. Here's my Trump biggest possible. It's that thick thunk. Yeah, with Trump's face.

[Sam Stein]

Oh, and then by the way, because you have an ulcer from all this and you need medication, you gotta go get it on the trumprx.gov folks. This is the dystopian future that we're in. All right, so let's get to the weird process here. So this one enraged me, and I don't get that ragey all the time. Borg takes is sponsored by Aura Frames. Look, Mother's Day is coming up and this is the last holiday where you want to get caught flat footed. Trust me, I've been there. It got ugly. Thankfully, Aura frames, digital picture frames are a complete layup of a gift because you can give your mom more of her favorite thing. And what is that? It's you and your grandkids in pixel form. Whether you're reliving that trip to Disney or you're just reliving moments from your childhood. I love my aura frame. I gave it to my mother in law last year. We put up all the pictures of her grandkids and her. She loves it. She displays it right out there in her living room. These digital frames allow you to share your photos and videos effortlessly. Download the free Aura app or text photos straight to your frame and with free unlimited storage, you can add as many photos and videos as you want. You can even preload photos before it ships and then you can keep adding them at any time or anywhere. Every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box with no price tag. Their top rated app reached number one in the App Store on Christmas Day in 2025. Named number one by Wirecutter. You can save on the gifts moms love by visiting auraframes.com for a limited time. Listeners can get $25 off their best selling carver mat frame with code Bulwark takes. That's a U R A frames.com promo code bulwark takes. Support the show by ment at checkout and terms and conditions do apply. We went to the White House this morning. So just again, pulling back the current here. I don't know, people probably don't care about the process here, but I'm going to make the case why it matters.

[Ben Parker]

Real quick, just before you tell the story, we are recording this. The day this story came out. It is April 28th. The story is just published like a couple hours ago. So this all happened today. Okay, so go ahead.

[Sam Stein]

Like not even like a, like we're talking. It happened like an hour and a half ago, maybe less. I'm like, still, I'm still getting off the high of it. We were originally going to put this in a little quick hits for, for morning shots. And I, I was like, ben, did we reach out to the White House for comment? Did we reach out to the State Department for comment for this? And we had not. And so I, I was like, look, we gotta do it. That's just what you do. You need to give them the right to comment. So we held this thing. We could have gone, we had it. But we, I made the call to say we have to hold this thing so they get the chance to comment. I thought that was a gracious and professional thing to do and that's really what you should business. So then you went to them to comment roughly around what time?

[Ben Parker]

About 10:30 this morning, a little later for the White House because they had to get us the right email address, whatever. But yeah, it was this morning. It was before noon for both.

[Sam Stein]

And we gave him two hours, which is an acceptable amount of time. It wasn't too short? Well, it certainly wasn't too long. But it wasn't too short either. And then when did they get back to you?

[Ben Parker]

The White House got back to me just before 1pm like, just before 1pm

[Sam Stein]

they responded well before that, though, they said we needed more time. Oh, sorry. When did the State Department get back to.

[Ben Parker]

Yeah, the State Department got back to me earlier than that. Earlier than that. Like early afternoon, late morning, something like around noonish. And they said, can we have a little more time? We're looking into it. But they said, you know, off the record, can we have more time?

[Sam Stein]

Okay. So you come to me and a couple of others here and we're sort of like, well, what do we do? And I was like, well, let's give them a couple more hours, but let's get it ready just in case they tried to rush us or frontload us. Which by that I mean they're going to give it to a different publication to get it out before we could do it. And Martin Wendell Jones was like, we should probably publish this because they're going to try to do that. And I said, yeah, they probably will. Which is why we got to get ready to go. And so then we're tinkering with it, we're editing it. We have a process in place for fact checking. We're doing the responsible thing and giving them a couple more hours, I thought was a nice gracious thing to do. We didn't have to do it. We felt really confident about the story already. Give them two more hours. I'm sitting in my office, Ben comes by and what do you say?

[Ben Parker]

They gave it to Fox.

[Sam Stein]

They gave it a fucking Fox News.

[Ben Parker]

But wait a minute. But, but, but that's not even it. I mean, should we talk about what that original Fox story was?

[Sam Stein]

Because, like, that was really fun. The original Fox story was like four graphs, but go ahead.

[Ben Parker]

It was like, it was like four words. It was nothing. So the White House gets back and I mean, they are really just like abusing all the journalist. They're saying on background. Here's a link to this Fox News story that we clearly just planted. And the Fox News story is like, the State Department's gonna redesign the passport. It doesn't say they're gonna put Trump's image in it. It doesn't say what image it is. It doesn't say, this is like unprecedented, never been done before. Just like the redesign of the passport. And Fox has exclusive. So it's like, hey, thanks for giving us more time. Thanks for giving us a heads up and a chance to comment. Go F yourself. Is basically what they said pretty much.

[Sam Stein]

And this is why. And this is why. I know this all seems so who cares? It's insider baseball. But this is why this totally. All right. Every time that the White House complains about reporters not giving them enough time to respond to a story, it's because of this. Because they're gonna you over if you do give them time. And so all their complaints are hollow. It's just true. And if they want to build up trust with anyone covering them, they shouldn't do this JV bush league crap where they give it to an outlet that they know is going to take a spoon fed story and rush it up and not be critical at all about them. Because the next time we go to the White House for comment, we'll give them some time, but we're not going to give them two hours and we're not going to acquiesce to their request for an additional couple hours to track something down because we now have evidence that they're just going to abuse that trust. So congrats to the White House aide who came up with this great scheme. You drew more attention to our story. I appreciate that you allowed us to understand how the process works on your end and I appreciate that there's more transparency for us. But you just burnt whatever trust we had. So it's dumb, it was stupid and you need to do it. And anyway, we're getting more attention anyway for it. So thank you.

[Ben Parker]

And you know, here's the thing, is this is a thing they are doing. It is a thing. You know, as I said, we first heard about this months ago, I think. Was that a first initial?

[Sam Stein]

I don't know if it was that many. It was maybe a month ago. Yeah, maybe.

[Ben Parker]

I'm thinking, okay, fine, we heard about this a while ago. Yeah, we've been on the lookout for it. So this is a thing they have been working on for a while. It is a thing they are planning on rolling out. It is not secret. Like, these are gonna be in passports that are gonna be in people's hands and use all over the world, right? They should be proud of it. Right? We come to them, we say, like, you're gonna do this. Do you want to comment? They shouldn't be like, you know, like, they should just give us a comment like, be own your thing, right? Like you're, this is your idea. It's your idea. Own it. Talk to us about it. Don't like sneak out and be like, oh, now we gotta like get it. It's not Like a.

[Sam Stein]

It's.

[Ben Parker]

This is like national security information, you know, I know.

[Sam Stein]

You know, we're not endangering some mission.

[Ben Parker]

No, not at all.

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[Ben Parker]

And then, like, the fact that FOX wanted originally published this, like, BS story, they were clearly more interested in helping the White House screw us. And they weren't reporting the story because there was no news in their story until they went back and updated it later.

[Sam Stein]

I mean, I would say maybe charitably to Fox, they didn't know that we were on the story and they just got a handout and they're like, cool. But do. The people at VOX should also realize that that's kind of embarrassing for them because they just take handouts, by the way, for folks who are watching this and who want to reward good behavior, we have a tips line that you can send your stuff to if you have good tips about stuff like this. Like, what else is he putting his face on? What else is he doing at the State Department? What kind of directives are going around, especially if you're at the Justice Department these days? There's so much happening there. And you want to give us some good tips that we could chase down and we'll do it ethically and responsibly, but we're not going to, you know, swallow bullshit from the administration. It's the Bulwark.com tips. The Bulwark.com tips secure tips line. Hit us up if you have anything else to say. All right, Ben, any last thoughts before we call it a day?

[Ben Parker]

Yeah, you mentioned our morning newsletter, Morning Chats. People aren't getting that. It's free. It's great. This is the kind of thing before it really blew up, this kind of thing, it was just. It was just going to be another Morning Shots piece. Like, it's full of stuff like this all the time. Little updates, fresh takes on the news. People should definitely subscribe if they haven't.

[Sam Stein]

All right, to recap, go to our live shows. May 20th and 21st, hit up our tips line, the bulwark.com tips, and read warning shots, which is a Go to morning newsletter. It's awesome. Bill. Andrew Egger Edited by Ben it's fantastic. All right, everyone, thanks so much for tuning into this Bulwark Takes. Appreciate it. Talk to you guys later.

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