Can the semiquincentennial coin can be used as currency? And is it even legal?
If you turned your television on yesterday to the conservative cable news station Newsmax, you might have seen something unusual.
Newsmax is running ads promoting a Trump-themed $1 coin.
However, the price is ten times that.
A coin to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary
The advertisement is almost two minutes long and has numerous superlatives about the president and American patriotism.
The ad also brags about the price of the coin, which is not one dollar.
“You might expect to pay $29, $39, or even $49 for a gold-clad coin this important. But during this special television offer, it can be yours for just $9.95!”
The coin can be used as currency
The odd thing about this whole one-dollar coin ordeal is that, according to Time Magazine, under federal law the $1 coin with Trump’s face on it can actually be used as currency.
But that is not how the United States Mint, the bureau responsible for manufacturing the country’s coin currency, is promoting it.
The bureau is promoting it as a collectible that comes with a certificate, just like it says in the Newsmax ad.
And while the coin is official legal tender, the government does not require businesses to accept the coin as currency.
Is it legal?
So, the coin is both used as currency and promoted as a collectible, which has given rise to speculation that the Trump administration is doing this to promote Trump’s own image. There are also questions over whether this is even legal.
“For me, I would consider it illegal,” Gabriel Mathy, an associate professor at American University, told The Guardian, citing a ban from 1866 that prohibited living people from being on coins.
There is also the more recent law named the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005, which prohibits living presidents from being depicted on a coin. Furthermore, the law states that it requires “such coins to be issued in the order of the period of service of each President, beginning with President George Washington. Restricts such coin series to deceased Presidents.”
Perhaps that is where the Trump administration found a loophole – that Trump is a former president himself.
Scott Bessent, the United States Treasury Secretary, is not that enthralled with the laws; instead, he argued on Fox News that because Calvin Coolidge, who was president at the time, was on a coin during the nation’s 150th anniversary, so can Trump be during the 250th celebration of America.
“During the 150th there was a Calvin Coolidge coin, so we can put living presidents’ images on a coin,” Bessent said in July.
That is now reality, and the special Trump one-dollar coin can be yours for just an extra nine one-dollar coins.
