President Donald Trump’s dream of building a massive triumphal arch hasn’t become reality yet—so he settled for a tacky plywood version in Washington’s iconic National Mall.
The towering replica now sits opposite a giant Ferris wheel as a centerpiece of the Great American State Fair, a sprawling patriotic festival the president will kickstart with a rally on Wednesday night.
The Fair, which runs until July 10, is supposed to mark weeks of celebrations for America’s 250th birthday. Instead, it is already attracting attention for all the wrong reasons.
Trump is scheduled to headline the opening rally after a string of retro performers dropped out of a planned concert series, including Poison frontman Bret Michaels and Milli Vanilli.
As more and more musicians withdrew, an incensed Trump then demanded on Truth Social that organizers cancel the event before announcing that he would headline a rally himself at the State Fair as a replacement for the “highly paid, Third Rate `Artists,’” his team had booked.
Among the acts now performing at Trump’s rally are MAGA favorite Lee Greenwood and Alexis Wilkins, the country singer better known in Washington circles as FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend.
The fair was pitched as a World’s Fair-style showcase featuring exhibits from all 50 states, concerts, food vendors, and military displays.
However, several Democratic states, including North Carolina, Connecticut, Maine, and Illinois, have declined to participate.
Some critics have accused organizers of turning a national celebration into a political event, and some businesses have publicly distanced themselves from the festival after finding it was not entirely non-partisan.
Despite this, about a dozen die-hard Trump fans were waiting in line before midday outside the makeshift fairgrounds on Wednesday, more than nine hours before Trump was due to take the stage.
Tourists who passed the plywood arch also stopped to take photos of the structure, although one man told the Daily Beast he had no idea what exactly he was posing in front of.
Trump’s real arch, however, has been proposed for another area in D.C. known as Memorial Circle and was recently approved by his handpicked Commission of Fine Arts.
Just as Napoleon Bonaparte had the Arc de Triomphe or Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang had the Great Wall, Trump wants his own giant “United States Triumphal Arch” sitting between the Lincoln Memorial and the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.
The 80-year-old president announced the project in October at a dinner party for billionaires donating to his White House ballroom.
Asked at the time who it would be built for, the president was unequivocal: “Me,” he replied.
The arch is one of many projects Trump has undertaken, though not all have been successful. A few blocks away, for example, a revamp of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has instead become one of Washington’s most mocked public works projects.
Elsewhere, there are other signs of the destruction some of Trump’s ventures have caused. For instance, damaged grass now covers the Ellipse, the site outside the White House where the UFC set up a fan festival coinciding with Trump’s Freedom 250 birthday bash earlier this month.
Wednesday night’s rally is also unfolding against a backdrop of growing tensions between America250—the bipartisan commission created by Congress to oversee the nation’s semiquincentennial—and Freedom 250, the Trump-backed group that has become the public face of many anniversary events.
The latter group is headed by Trump State Department official Keith Krach, who serves as CEO, and also includes MAGA power players such as top fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke and campaign strategist Chris LaCivita.
However, critics argue that Freedom 250 has eclipsed the original commission and transformed what was intended as a broad civic celebration into something far more political.
