Hey, good morning. It is Sunday, February the 15th. For many years, if you were traveling to the

nation of Turkmenistan, you would fly in through Turkmenbashi Airport. You'd take a cab down

Turkmenbashi Avenue. You'd maybe tour the campus of Turkmenbashi

secondary school. The longtime president of the country had them all named after himself,

Turkmenbashi, meaning father of all Turkmen, which was not his legal name. He named himself

father of all Turkmen. For 20 years, Saparmurant Nyazov maintained a cult of personality as the

autocratic leader of Turkmenistan. He declared himself president for life in 1999. He mandated

that a book he wrote, which I have a copy of, be taught in all schools and to the civil service.

He changed the name of each day of the week and month in the year.

January was named after him. April was named after his mother, October, after a book that he wrote.

February was named for the country's flag because that was the month in which the people of

Turkmenistan celebrated Flag Day, but they only celebrated Flag Day because they were forced to,

and it also

happened to be Niazov's birthday. The country and the man were celebrated at once. Citizens were

bust into the capital and made to wave flags. Parades were held. Members of the government

handed him awards. Statues of him littered the capital, almost always made of gold. Across the world,

an American man also obsessed with

gold and famous for naming buildings after himself, entered the fray of American politics and

amassed the largest cult of personality that our country had seen in decades. And now he's engaging

in a self-naming spree that would rival Niazov. Before politics, Donald Trump stamped his name onto skyscrapers and hotels

and ties and steaks and vodka. As president, he still hawks eponymous watches, phones, and

sneakers. But in his second term as president, the habit is mutated into an ugly obsession,

...