President Donald Trump is pushing ahead with his latest vanity project, even though it has yet to be fully approved.
Trump, 80, wants a 250-foot gilded triumphal arch erected for Memorial Circle, the roundabout leading to Arlington National Cemetery.
The monument, nicknamed the “Arch de Trump,” will rise to 250 feet, dwarfing the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial across the Potomac River. The president wants it built before his term ends in January 2029.
Trump ally Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, breathlessly announced on Thursday that excavation work on the arch was imminent.
“After a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch” he wrote on X.
Burgum went on, “This will be one of the Great Pieces of American Architecture, honoring the history and significance of Arlington Cemetery and befitting the most powerful Capital in the World.”
However, as with his $400 million ballroom, which was only officially approved by the Supreme Court this week despite the East Wing being demolished in October last year, the arch has yet to receive final approval, according to the New York Times.
The National Capital Planning Commission, which has authority over projects built on federally owned land in Washington, has not given Trump’s plans its final approval.
The planning commission is reviewing the arch, which Trump has said he wants to dwarf the size of his historic mood-board, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but is not scheduled to meet again until Oct. 1.
Last week, Trump’s own administration highlighted almost 40 landmarks the arch would impact.
Officials who reviewed the plans for the arch found it would obscure the view from the Eternal Flame that marks President John F. Kennedy’s grave.
It would also end the plan to link Arlington House, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s former home, with the Lincoln Memorial—a corridor laid out to mark national healing after the Civil War.
Ed Stierli, vice president for government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association, told the New York Times that Trump’s proposed designs mean “you’re building something that will irreversibly harm the experience in these other locations.”
The National Park Service also flagged opposition to the proposed monument, mostly involving the impact on the nearby Arlington National Cemetery, the sacred burial ground for fallen soldiers from across American history.
That included a woman who said the enormous arch would “desecrate the solemnity of the Arlington Cemetery as a hallowed place of repose for those military members and their families.”
One person noted in the park service’s assessment, “Please shut down this asinine assault on America. We don’t need or want an arch, a ballroom, or any of the other tributes he has put forward to stroke his ego. No! No! No!”
