250-foot arch would include sniper nest provisions, munitions storage
The site went live Friday and the White House highlighted it the morning after U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting work on the site for 14 days. That order followed a vote to approve the arch by a federal planning commission whose members include numerous Trump allies.
The structure is slated to rise between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery in a mix of gold ornamentation and gray granite, according to the site. It will be formally known as the United States Military Triumphal Arch.
The website offers bird’s-eye views of the proposal from many angles and shows the declarations the monument will feature: “One Nation Under God” on one side and “Golden Age of America” on another. The plans call for towering gold doors with panels of sculptures at the base, and a golden-hued cherub hoisting a flaming torch at the very top — a figure the site presents as recalling a smaller version of the Statue of Liberty.
The site does not say how much the project will cost or how it will be paid for. Some estimates have reached as high as $100 million.
Its military features are described in detail. The arch will include an event space in the horizontal part of the structure, reached by elevators and stairs. But inside, according to the site, “massive columns will be storage for munitions,” and areas on the pedestal and observation deck will be “set aside for snipers, countersnipers, and provisions for a sniper nest.”
An open ground area at the monument’s base “will be designed for launching drones and other homeland security assets,” the site states. It also describes the arch as one that “will be Highly Secretive but, at the same time, a Top Level and Lethal structure, the likes of which has not been seen in this Country before.”
“It is long overdue, and has been sought for many years, especially by the Military,” it says.
The launch was the fourth day this week on which the administration promoted the president’s building projects. On Monday, in his final remarks before the midterm elections, Trump focused on his overhaul of the Lincoln Memorial’s Reflecting Pool. The day after his party’s losses, on Wednesday, he took reporters on a tour of the White House ballroom’s construction site. His first official action after losing control of Congress was to declare on Thursday that the Oval Office would become a national monument.
The arch website features the word “Triumph” in gold cursive script recalling the typeface used at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, along with flourishes similar to those affixed to the White House as part of his overhaul of the Oval Office and West Wing.
Trump has said for months that the monument would be inspired by the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and that Washington has wanted a similar structure for centuries. The Associated Press reported that the second assertion is not true. Trump previously joked that the arch might be called the “Arc de Trump.”
The website repeats the president’s inaccurate claims about the project’s history. It also features a picture of Trump and quotes him as saying, “This will be the greatest and most beautiful triumphal arch, anywhere in the world.”
With Democrats taking control of Congress in January, the president’s renovation projects will encounter far more scrutiny and roadblocks — among them his effort to put his own name on the Kennedy Center, his remaking of a public golf course, the White House ballroom and the arch itself.