Out of touch or on the money? Rep. Joe Wilson wants Trump to be the face of a new $250 bill
On Tuesday, as President Donald Trump told Americans that a minerals deal with Ukraine might be a “trillion-dollar deal” that could enrich the U.S., South Carolina’s senior Republican congressman had his eyes on a smaller prize: a $250 bill.
“Grateful to announce that I am drafting legislation to direct the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to design a $250 bill featuring Donald J. Trump.” Rep. Joe Wilson posted on X. “Bidenflation has destroyed the economy forcing American families to carry more cash. Most valuable bill for most valuable President!”
So many questions: Was Wilson serious? Was he joking? Could this actually happen or was this just another sycophantic attempt to suck up to a president like the legislation Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna announced a month ago to carve Trump’s face on Mount Rushmore, which will go nowhere? And how many Americans even use cash on a regular basis these days, anyway?
Turns out Wilson is more serious than a wooden nickel.
A text message to David Snider, Wilson’s communications director, came back Tuesday night: “Real legislation coming soon.”
An emailed statement from Rep. Wilson followed: “This proposal is representative of America’s 250th anniversary next year and celebrates the President who is working to battle the economic problems left by Bidenflation, which have resulted in Americans paying more for everyday goods and services, causing their pocketbooks to drain and jobs to disappear.”
Immediate reaction was about what you’d expect on X.
“Starting to think this is a parody account. You think we carry $250 around? You are out of touch Joe.”
“Really? I voted for Trump, but isn’t there more pressing issues at hand?”
“I love it.”
“Let’s go!”
The U.S. circulated much larger bills decades ago, but if Wilson’s idea ever comes to fruition, the new denomination would, ahem, trump, the largest U.S. bill in production today — the $100 — and make Trump the sixth U.S. president on our currency.
You know the list: George Washington is on the $1 bill, Thomas Jefferson is on the $2 bill, Abraham Lincoln is on the $5 bill, Andrew Jackson is on the $20 bill, and Ulysses S. Grant is on the $50 bill. Non-presidents Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin are on the $10 and $100 bill, respectively.
No bills greater than $100 have been printed in 80 years, according to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Bills in denominations of $500, $1,000, $5,000 and $10,000 were previously printed but not since 1945 — Trump wasn’t even born then — and the Department of the Treasury and the Federal Reserve System discontinued them in 1969 because — shocker — they weren’t in frequent use.
The largest note ever printed was a $100,000 gold certificate in the span of a month between 1934 and 1935, but it was used only for Federal Reserve Bank transactions and didn’t circulate among the public. Now even $20 bills don’t circulate as much as they used to.
According to Capitol One shopping research from August, almost half of American adults — 47.8% — don’t use cash for their typical purchases in a given week, and nearly 70% used cash for few, or zero, purchases over the past year. Gallup polls show fewer and fewer people use cash. In 2022, 6 in 10 said they make no or “only a few” purchases with cash, nearly double the 32% who did in 2017.
So wait, are we taking Wilson seriously?
It’s too early to judge the bill’s prospects, but Wilson’s effort conflicts with an existing law from 1866 that states, “No portrait shall be placed upon any of the bonds, securities, notes, fractional or postal currency of the United States, while the original of such portrait is living.” That’s according to a publication titled “Laws of the United States Relating to Loans and the Currency, [since 1860] Including the Coinage Acts,” compiled at the Treasury Department in 1878 and free to read on the internet.
In his statement, Wilson said his legislation would amend the 1866 law to allow for President Trump to appear on the bill while he is alive.
It’s curious timing for Wilson to propose a U.S. money makeover when Trump turned the world order on its head just a day earlier by siding with Russia and North Korea against a United Nations resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine, which passed overwhelmingly and which revealed serious divisions between the U.S. and its traditional European allies.
Wilson has long been a steady presence in Congress on issues of global importance.
He serves on the House Armed Forces Committee and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and easily won The State Editorial Board’s endorsement and his re-election last year by touting his bona fides and his philosophy that “International policy is Democracies Defeat Dictators with Peace Through Strength as achieved by Ronald Reagan.”
Tuesday, Wilson’s tweet about the Trump $250 bill was sandwiched in between others about world affairs and Ukraine, including one in which he said the negotiations to end war in Ukraine “need maximum leverage” and another condemning “war criminal” Vladimir Putin while lauding Trump’s unorthodox approach to ending the war in Ukraine.
Last week, Trump criticized not the Russian president but democratically-elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy on social media, dismissing the U.S. ally and freedom fighter as “a modestly successful comedian” and a “Dictator without Elections” who played former President Joe Biden “like a fiddle.”
Trump said Zelenskyy “should have never started it,” when it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago that escalated recent hostilities and Putin’s illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula that preceded the current conflict. The war is now a war of words.
Luckily, Wilson has shown he can focus on many issues at once, especially of the complex geopolitical variety, but the situation in Ukraine deserves his attention more than a $250 bill that no one asked for, that would come with a cost and that will end up being as real as Monopoly money.
The curious clashes between Trump, Putin and Zelenskyy, and not the $250 bill, is what history will remember. Take that to the bank.
This story was originally published February 26, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Out of touch or on the money? Rep. Joe Wilson wants Trump to be the face of a new $250 bill."