Fed up with what he calls “narcissism” on President Donald Trump’s part, Wyoming wildlife photographer Tom Mangelsen has designed plastic sleeves to cover Trump’s face on national park passes.
The sleeves feature Mangelsen’s photos and cover the images of Trump and George Washington on “America the Beautiful” park passes.
“When he (Trump) said he was going to put his mug on park passes, that was just too much,” Mangelsen, who lives near Jackson, told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.
Mangelsen isn’t the first to take umbrage over Trump’s picture appearing on the passes.
In January, protestors were slapping stickers over Trump’s face, which the federal government said rendered the passes invalid.
Other Trump detractors then started designing sleeves.
Mangelsen’s sleeves are being marketed online and at some outdoors gear stores, with roughly 50% of the proceeds going to conservation, according to his gallery office.
The sleeves apparently are popular. A recent TikTok video featuring them received about 1.5 million views, according to Mangelsen’s office.
Mangelsen said he thinks that the decision to put Trump’s picture on the park passes was driven by the president’s oversized ego.
Why All The Fuss?
William Perry Pendley, the former BLM chief under President Trump and Wyoming native, told Cowboy State Daily on Monday he doesn't understand what all the fuss us about.
Protesting Trump’s image on park passes, he said, doesn’t make sense.
Trump has brought many federal lands in the West back under the rule of law rather than catering strictly to environmental groups, said Pendley, who was director of the Bureau of Land Management under the Trump administration from 2019 to 2021.
Pendley said he doesn’t see any reason to take issue with Trump’s picture on the passes, because he’s the sitting president.
It was Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum’s call, and their prerogative to include the president’s picture, he said.
Pendley said Trump detractors have it all wrong.
National Park Service holdings in the Washington, D.C., area were “trashed” before Trump took office, he said.
“It’s more beautiful now that it has been in decades, and that’s because of President Trump,” he said.
Trump and Burgum have also turned around the BLM around, he said.
Under the Biden administration and former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, BLM land skewed heavily toward “preservation,” he said.
By law, BLM holdings are intended for “multiple use,” including public recreation, mining and energy extraction, livestock grazing, and more, Pendley added.
The controversial BLM Rock Springs Resource Management Plan is an example of terrible Biden-Haaland policy that’s been reversed under Trump, he said.
‘Kind Of Fun’
Mangelsen said there’s a bit of tongue-in-cheek in offering tourists the option to cover Trump’s face with his photos.
“I thought that it was just something that would be kind of fun,” he said.
But there’s a serious side to it, he added.
Mangelsen said he thinks Trump has been hostile toward federal lands and the environment.
“He’s doubled down on the killing of wild horses,” Mangelsen said. “People might think that I should stick to photography and stay out of politics. But I’m also a conservationist; I have to speak up.”
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
