The Arc de Trump—A Monstrosity in the Making 

In April, President Donald Trump unveiled plans for a giant victory arch to be located in a traffic circle near Arlington National Cemetery. The monument has been called the Arc de Trump, which isn’t a line from Saturday Night Live. When asked whom the arch would honor, Trump said: “Me.” 

Dictators love monuments, particularly those reaching towards the sky. 

Statues of Stalin were ubiquitous throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, symbols of his power. Over 6,000 Lenin monuments still exist in Russia. 

In 1932, Mussolini erected Rationalist and Neoclassical monuments to project imperial power and link his reign to ancient Rome. His “Mussolini Dux” obelisk in Rome stands 120 feet tall, including its base.  

In 1806, Napoleon commissioned the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to honor those who fought for France, specifically in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. After the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, Hitler led his armies around the Arc, which is 164 feet tall. 

Hitler approved Albert Speer’s design for a Triumphal Arch in Berlin, designed to be twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe. It was never finished. 

The Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, North Korea, built in 1982, was said to commemorate the Korean resistance to Japan from 1925 to 1945. In fact, it was intended to honor the bloodthirsty dictator Sung’s role in North Korean independence. Dedicated on the occasion of his 70th birthday, each of its 25,500 blocks of finely dressed white granite represents a day in his life. Modeled after the Arc de Triomphe, it is a little taller, standing at 197 feet.  

Not everyone venerates height. The biblical Jews regarded Mount Sinai, at 7,497 feet high, as the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. In Islam, the mountain is also considered sacred. Mount Sinai is not the tallest of mountains, and the summit is readily accessible on foot. The symbolism is that moral truth is attainable. The taller the mountain, the more inaccessible the revelation. 

Renderings of the Trump arch, submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts, show it to be 250 feet high—taller than the 220-foot-high Monument to the Revolution in Mexico City, and dwarfed only by the 630-foot iconic Gateway Arch in St. Louis, which is a gateway to the west commemorating Thomas Jefferson’s vision of a continental nation. The despised brutal dictator Porfirio Diaz erected the revolution monument in Mexico as much to honor “Porfirian glory” as the Mexican Revolution. 

The proposed Arc de Trump profanes the brave men and women who protect democracy. Its symbolism is tortured. It will be an excrescence on the landscape that connects the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of America’s war heroes. 

The arch’s designers seemed to have cribbed from other monuments. There will be a faux 60-foot-tall, gilded statue resembling a pastiche of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch and Nike, the Greek goddess of victory, a lift from the statue that Porfirio Díaz erected in 1910 atop a victory column in Mexico City.  

Trump’s trademark has always been, “Always go for the gold.” He ostentatiously decorated Trump Tower and the Plaza Hotel with lush, heavily gilded, 24-karat gold-leaf interiors, inspired by Versailles. Trump Tower features gold-adorned moldings, marble, and fixtures, while the Plaza Hotel boasts 24-karat gold-plated fixtures and ornate details, notably in its restored bathrooms and suites. A gold-plated toilet seat is always easier on the backside. He’s brought the same grandiose aesthetic to the White House, both the Oval Office and the West Wing, and, before long, to the grand ballroom he’s constructing where the East Wing used to stand.  

There is no paucity of gilding around the Arc de Trump, including the ornamental relief on the façade, with lettering spelling out “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice for All,” and on the four sculpted lions guarding the arch. The lions resemble those at the entrance to the New York Public Library. Is Trump identified with books and learning? 

Trump decided on the arch after a trip to Paris. Perhaps that was the same trip where, amid considerable controversy, he canceled a visit to honor our fallen at the U.S. cemetery in Aisne-Marne. 

The 250-foot height originated with the idea of honoring the 250th anniversary of American independence. But Trump couldn’t help but remark that the Arc de Trump would be taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.  

But the details, the braggadocio, and the monument’s height matter less than the mere fact that it perverts a fundamentally American attitude towards war. We abhor wars of choice. We are not a martial people. But we know that “war is hell,” but that it is sometimes necessary. 

Americans always prefer peace to victory in war. Wilson said that World War I was the “war to end all wars.” As America entered World War II, Roosevelt made the case for American involvement with his “four freedoms”—the freedom of speech, the freedom of worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. He articulated America’s war aims and gave hope to Americans fighting for freedom. Even Trump, on the campaign trail in 2024, vowed to keep us out of “endless wars.” 

Victory arches are primarily political statements, assertions of personal power, propaganda, and hype. The Emperor Domitian, shortly after the death of his older brother Titus, constructed the honorific Arch of Titus in Rome in the first century to commemorate Titus’s official deification and the victory of Titus over the Great Jewish Revolt. 

In his Second Inaugural Address in 1865, Abraham Lincoln did not stress victory but instead called for reconciliation, healing, and a “just and lasting peace,” emphasizing national unity over revenge: “with malice toward none; with charity for all.” 

In the renderings submitted to the CFA, the proposed arch obscures the vista joining the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington Cemetery. It will also frame perfect views of Arlington House, the mansion once owned by the slaveholding insurrectionist Robert E. Lee.  

The arch is depressing in the current moment, when the United States is at a fragile stalemate with Iran.  

According to Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Operation Epic Fury was a “capital V military victory.”   

But the stubborn fact is that Iran stands bloodied but unbowed. Its military architecture and nuclear program have been degraded and compromised but not extinguished. Our “military victory” is impressive but not definitive. Like the president’s statements about the war, including his threat to annihilate the entire civilization of Iran, the arch bestriding Washington like a Colossus is a fraud, its message nihilistic. It proclaims that bigness can replace badness, the false promise that speaking loudly carries a big stick. 

Public comments over the news of the construction overwhelmingly criticize the proposed arch deifying Trump, describing it as grotesque, un-American, and reminiscent of fascist architecture. Many express outrage at the idea of such a monument near Arlington National Cemetery, viewing it as disrespectful to those who struggled for the nation. There is a strong sentiment that the arch symbolizes Trump’s ego and is a waste of resources, with some commenters suggesting it should never be built or, if constructed, should be dismantled. 

To a traumatized generation, monuments are important, but they also give us a break.