President Donald Trump unveiled his latest gilded D.C. vanity project at Wednesday’s lavish White House dinner for his billionaire backers.
The 79-year-old ex-real estate developer used the dinner to showcase multiple proposed versions of a massive triumphal arch he hopes to erect across from the Lincoln Memorial, awkwardly holding up miniature models for his guests to inspect.
Trump is planning his national monument for the traffic circle at the end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, which connects the Lincoln Memorial to the Arlington National Cemetery.
At the glitzy dinner, which Trump hosted while more than half a million federal workers are furloughed amid the government shutdown, the president claimed that “every time” people drive across the bridge towards the currently undeveloped traffic circle, “They literally say, ‘Something is supposed be here!’”
The arch, which is topped by a winged golden angel he introduced as “Lady Liberty,” appears to borrow from Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, and the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang—monuments commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte, Frederick the Great, and the state to celebrate late Supreme Leader Kim Il Sung, respectively.
It appears the arch would be slightly taller than the iconic Lincoln Memorial, which finished construction in 1922.
“It’s going to be really beautiful,” Trump said. “I think it’s going to be fantastic.”
He rambled on about his project, whose price remains a mystery, to a silent audience, until some laughter broke out when he described the miniature models he was fumbling with as “small, medium, and large.”
“I happened to pick the large one. Why are you shocked to hear that,” he said as the crowd laughed along. The models were spotted on his desk in the Oval Office last week.
Trump claimed that a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee was once proposed for the traffic circle in 1902, saying, “A lot of people would not have liked it, but it would have been OK with me.”
The president hosted the fundraising dinner in the White House’s East Room for the donors and corporations who are helping fund the cost of another of his legacy-building efforts: a $200 million ballroom already under construction.
Companies including Microsoft, Google, Palantir, as well as billionaires such as Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss attended the event.
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