President Donald Trump's enormous triumphal arch took a step closer to reality after its early designs received approval from his handpicked fine arts commission, and CNN's Tom Foreman revealed how the massive structure would dwarf its surroundings in the nation's capital.
The 79-year-old president has proposed a towering, 250-foot arch, modeled after the 164-foot Arc de Triomphe in Paris, in honor of the country’s semiquincentennial, and its imposing scale would be twice as tall as the Lincoln Memorial, nearly as tall as the Capitol and potentially interfere with flight paths around Washington Reagan National Airport.
"Wasteful, gaudy, disruptive," Foreman said. "Against a torrent of public complaints, the Trump administration is plowing ahead with plans for a massive triumphal arch across the river from the Lincoln Memorial, with no less than the interior secretary telling the U.S. Fine Arts Commission the project will strengthen the city's symbolic architectural vocabulary, will enhance the city's triumphal urban design."
"The president began talking up what some are calling the Arc de Trump last year, and the size has now quadrupled to a towering 250 feet – taller than the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, just a bit shorter than the U.S. Capitol."
Washington Post culture critic Philip Kennicott has warned the proposed structure makes no sense architecturally or symbolically.
"This is gargantuan, and it's going to fundamentally change the skyline," Kennicott said. "Why a triumphal arch? When did America celebrate triumphs? We honor sacrifice, we honor service, and when war is over, we get back to peace. He just doesn't understand the history and the symbolism of this city."
The president has been slapping his name onto buildings and proposing dramatic changes to Washington as he looks to remake the nation and its capital in his own image.
"I think he believes that this is going to be part of his legacy, that if he builds a gigantic arch, that surely won't be dismantled, that it will continue to place him in this kind of pantheon of great presidents," said Sarah Bond, an associate professor of ancient history at the University of Iowa.
The $100 million is moving ahead with the approval of Trump's appointees, and the president and his administration have brushed aside concerns about its impact on its surroundings.
"Team Trump says the edifice will enhance Arlington [National Cemetery] and the nation's 250th birthday," Foreman said. "But when Trump rolled out his idea and was asked who's it for, his answer then 'me.'"
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