A “draft” from the Ministry of Finance for the $1 commemorative coin that will be made next year.
Courtesy: US Department of Treasury
The Treasury is considering President Donald Trump is celebrating him with a dollar coin resembling both sides and creating a dollar coin to celebrate the US’s 250th birthday next year.
The first draft of that coin marks the six-annual anniversary of the country’s founding, with Trump’s head outlined on one side, on top of “God’s Trust” and the words of the date 1776 and 2026.
The other side of the coin shows a rebellious Trump raising his fist, closely coinciding with the pose he clashed after surviving an attempted assassination at a 2024 presidential rally in Pennsylvania.
The word “battle of battle” that Trump peers at his supporters shortly after the attack appears around that side of the coin.
“There’s no fake news here. These first drafts honoring America’s 250th birthday and @potus are authentic,” US treasurer Brandon Beach wrote in X in response to a promotional sketch for the coin.
“We look forward to sharing it sooner. Once the US government’s occlusionist closure is over,” writes Beach.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent reposted the Beach message from his own X account.
A spokesman for the Treasury Department told CNBC that the final design of the $1 coin commemorating the anniversary has not yet been selected.
But “This first draft reflects the lasting spirit of our nation and democracy.
Commemorative coins are legal fiat currencies, but according to the US Mint, they are not minted for the general circulation.
It was not immediately clear whether the government had created previous commemorative coins or other coins depicting the living president.
A federal law signed by Trump in January 2021 (just a week before his first term in office ends), allows the Treasury Secretary to create a dollar coin in the iconic US semi-calcentennial designs in the anniversary year.
However, that same law states under the heading on the standard of circulating collectible coins, “Portraits of the head and shoulders of a living or dead person, or of a chest, and portraits of a living person, cannot be included in the inverse design of a coin based on subsections (x), (y), and (z).”
Subsection Y refers to rules regarding the 250th anniversary coin.
That language appears in a similar way to other coin-related laws listed on the US Mint website.
The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco says, “It has been a long-standing tradition to feature only portraits of deceased individuals in terms of currency and coins, in order to avoid the emergence of monarchies.”
“That tradition became law in the Parliamentary Act of 1866,” the Fed added.
The Treasury did not provide a comment in response to CNBC’s questions regarding the legality of the draft coin.
