Donald Trump officially unveiled plans for an Arc de Triomphe-style monument, which will be constructed to mark America’s 250th anniversary next year during his controversial donor dinner at the White House on Wednesday.
The massive construction project will involve erecting the arch on a traffic circle near Arlington Cemetery, with two giant white eagles attached to the top of the arch.
A golden angel will be placed at the crest of the monument if the construction plans follow the scale model that Trump clutched in his hand.
“Every time somebody rides over that beautiful bridge to the Lincoln Memorial, they literally say something is supposed to be here,” Trump told diners at a fundraising event for his $250 million ballroom at the White House.
“We have versions of it … This is a mock-up,” he added, waving the scale model of the arch.
The president claimed that some of the money left over from his White House ballroom refurbishment will fund the construction.
He claimed that the ballroom has already been “fully financed.”
A White House official told CNN that Trump “came up” with the design and that the arch, which the Washington Post reported was meant to be temporary, should be permanent.
However, Trump’s arch will closely follow a design previously shared online by architect Nicolas Leo Charbonneau from Harrison Design, which would sit opposite the Lincoln Memorial.
When Charbonneau unveiled his proposal for the arch, he claimed that “America needs a triumphal arch!”
His sketch resembles the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte commissioned to commemorate soldiers who died in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Trump claimed that the roundabout was initially planned to be named Memorial Circle in 1902, with a statue of Confederate Civil War general Robert E Lee being erected on the site.
The president said that the statue “would have been okay with me,” despite Lee being a highly controversial figure due to his public support for slavery during the Civil War.
Plans for the arch on the roundabout were first spotted on the president’s desk during an interview with the Finnish Prime Minister, fuelling rampant speculation online.
During his second term, Trump has launched several major construction projects, besides adding a ballroom to the White House and the arch.
The president paved over the historic Rose Garden at the White House, which had been decorated in a French formal style by John F Kennedy’s administration. Trump replaced all of the grass with patio tiles before rebranding it as his “Rose Garden Club.”
He has also radically transformed the Oval Office, adding gold medallions, cherubs, eagles, and Rococo-style mirrors. The style mimics the decor seen in his Mar-a-Lago mansion and in Trump Tower.
Vice President JD Vance shared that his 5-year-old son likes the office’s new appearance.
“His favorite color is gold. And whenever he walks into the Oval Office, he’s just blown away by it because it does have this bright, lively feel,” Vance said.
One of Trump’s proposed projects would have involved transforming Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” although he admitted the U.S. would have to “take over” and “own” the strip first.
After sharing an AI-generated video of himself and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lying by a pool in Gaza wearing swimming shorts, Trump went on to say that the area could host the “world’s people.”
The status of those plans is unknown now that Hamas and Israel have officially committed to a ceasefire.
The president’s construction projects have been fiercely criticized by Democrats who have pointed to the fact that he has continued to push ahead with plans, despite the government shutdown.
California Governor Gavin Newsom branded the president “Marie Antoinette” for ignoring the shutdown in a widely shared post on X.
“TRUMP ‘MARIE ANTOINETTE’ SAYS, ‘NO HEALTH CARE FOR YOU PEASANTS, BUT A BALLROOM FOR THE QUEEN!,” Newsom wrote in an X post which mimicked Trump’s social media style.
