Trump’s Triumphal Arch Would Tower Over Lincoln Memorial and Cost Taxpayers Millions

Let’s be honest about what’s happening here. The Interior Department just released renderings for what President Trump calls his triumphal arch, and the thing would stand 250 feet tall, dwarfing the Lincoln Memorial like a parent towering over a child. More than twice as high as that 99-foot monument to the man who actually saved the Union. The tallest triumphal arch in the world, because apparently being second best isn’t an option.

The proposed site sits in a traffic circle on the Virginia side of the Potomac, wedged between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. It’s technically DC land, which means federal jurisdiction, which means this becomes everyone’s problem. Harrison Design, a Washington architecture firm, drew up the plans. They show inscriptions reading “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice For All” on either side, gold-colored Lady Liberty statues flanked by eagles at the top, and four lion statues around the base. It’s meant to look like Paris’s Arc de Triomphe, except bigger. Always bigger.

Here’s the part that should make your blood pressure tick up a notch. American taxpayers are funding this thing. The National Endowment for the Humanities spending plan, approved by the Office of Management and Budget back in September, reserves $2 million in special initiative funds and $13 million in matching funds specifically for the arch. That’s $15 million in public money for what the president himself has said is for “me.” Not for you. Not for the country’s 250th anniversary, despite the official line. For him.

You know what gets me? We’ve got a national debt that makes Monopoly money look responsible, infrastructure crumbling in towns across America, and veterans waiting months for basic healthcare. But sure, let’s build a monument that screams “look at me” louder than anything else on the National Mall. The president wants the “biggest one of all,” and by God, he’s going to get it, roughly 30 feet taller than Mexico City’s Plaza de la República.

The location raises practical concerns that apparently nobody thought through. The proposed site sits along a flight path for Reagan National Airport. So pilots approaching one of the busiest airports in the region will now have to navigate around a 250-foot vanity project. What could possibly go wrong? It’s the kind of detail that matters when you’re actually governing instead of just building monuments to yourself.

The Commission of Fine Arts will hear a presentation about this on April 16. That commission happens to be composed entirely of Trump appointees now, which tells you everything about how this approval process will likely go. It’s not exactly a mystery where this is headed. When you stack the deck with your own people, you don’t do it because you’re worried about getting a fair hearing. You do it because you want a rubber stamp.

Limited government used to mean something in conservative circles. It meant restraint. It meant not using public resources for personal glorification. The founders understood that republics die when leaders start building temples to themselves. Rome fell, partly because emperors confused the state treasury with their personal piggy bank. We’re supposed to be different. We’re supposed to value humility, service, and the idea that no man stands above the country itself.

There’s something deeply un-American about a leader commissioning a triumphal arch for himself while still in office. Washington refused a crown. Lincoln would have been mortified by the memorial that bears his name. Even Teddy Roosevelt, who wasn’t exactly shy about self-promotion, understood that monuments come after you’re gone, built by a grateful nation, not demanded while you’re still signing executive orders.

The inscriptions are particularly galling. “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice For All” are noble sentiments. They deserve better than being slapped on a structure that represents everything opposite to those ideals. Real liberty means freedom from leaders who think they’re owed monuments. Real justice means spending public money on public needs, not presidential egos.

This isn’t conservatism. It’s narcissism with a construction permit.

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