Kennedy suggests ‘rule’ that no politician should have a building named after them while alive

GOP Sen. John Kennedy (La.) said Sunday that public officials should not have buildings named after them while they are alive, as President Trump fights to rename the Kennedy Center after himself.

During an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Kennedy said public officials, including Trump, should not “spend public money on private ads for themselves.”

The Louisiana Republican made his remarks as a new ad promoting Trump — which was funded with taxpayer money — appears on multiple networks.

“The White House sees it differently, but … you can’t spend public money to … promote yourself,” Kennedy told host Margaret Brennan.

The Republican senator then took it a step further, saying it should be illegal for public officials to have a building named after them while they are alive.

“I may end up with a sombrero on my head, but I also think we ought to have a rule that no politician can have a building named after him when he’s alive,” he quipped, referring to the president mocking Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries last year by sharing doctored videos of them donning sombreros .

Throughout his second term, Trump has attempted to rename multiple buildings after himself. That includes the Kennedy Center, but a federal judge invalidated multiple attempts from the Trump-aligned board to add the president’s name to the facility.

The State Department also added Trump’s name to the U.S. Institute of Peace last December. But former institute employees, whom the administration ousted, filed a court motion earlier this month to stop construction crews from carving the president’s name onto the exterior of the building.

“The threatened carving would impose serious irreparable harm,” the attorneys for the former employees wrote in their emergency filing . “It is a discrete act that can and should be forestalled through a limited, status-quo-preserving modification of the stay pending appeal.”