We’re in the middle of a Republican shut down of the government, and Donald Trump is making ridiculous redecorating plans.
His other second-term developments include a gilded makeover for the White House, paving over the Rose Garden and constructing a $250m ballroom, as well as the clearing of homeless encampments throughout the capital.
Gilding the White House? Jesus fuck.
You could build a lot of low-income housing for $250 million. Just saying.
This is what he does in his free time?
He also wants to build a monument, the Arc de Trump.
US President Donald Trump wants to build a triumphal arch across from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, the latest in his efforts to make over the capital city in his style.
The so-called Arc de Trump would commemorate the country’s 250th anniversary next year and is reportedly being privately funded by Trump’s supporters.
He wants to build a pointless monument in just a year? You know it’s going to be cheaply and sloppily built, and will fall apart shortly afterwards. Plaster and lath, with gilding. Yuck. And who cares about laws and regulations? Not the Republicans.
Plans for Trump’s proposed arch are still taking shape but it is expected to be located across the Potomac River on federal land inside the district’s boundaries.
Developing a memorial in the District of Columbia is complex given its unique status as the capital city, according to Dr Christine Henry, director of the Center for Historic Preservation at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
New commemorations typically need congressional approval as part of a 24-step plan developed by the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), which approves designs along with the Commission of Fine Arts (CFA).
Even the craven New York Times is calling this for what it is.
Critics, including a guest essayist for the New York Times, have called his Oval Office remodel a “Gilded Rococo Nightmare”.
I hope the next Democratic administration, if there is one, is prepared to budget for demolition and cleanup.
Crossposted with the infinite thread:
Showing off the model of the arch for the Young Republicans at the 3-minute mark.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=y9qBp7XevOY
So tacky.
Empires with grandiose monuments are rarely friends of humanitarians.
And meanwhile, here is what his friends are doing.
(OT) Gaza aid still critically scarce, say agencies, as Israel delays convoys
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/17/gaza-aid-still-critically-scarce-say-agencies-as-israel-delays-convoys
“Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
one of those things that comes to mind to anybody with, well, an education.
This is what he does in his free time?
Reminds me of a certain Austrian ex-corporal, who had models of the proposed Berlin and Salzburg of the future to which he and Speer kept adding almost until the Russian artillery was audible within the chancellery (at which point the project came to a halt because the model-builders were sent to the front lines).
I wouldn’t worry about that arc going up. He is the same person who declared that a wall would be built along the entire southern border of your country during his first 4 years in office. And he said after losing the re-election that he had completed building that wall.
Trump is like Midas if Midas was cursed by Cloakina: Everything he touches turns into gilded shit.
I wonder what part of that $250 million ends up in his pocket. Hmmm.
At least Albert Speer was a competent archirect, and his stuff apparently used quality materials.
.
If this arc ends up half-finished, maybe you can turn it into two pillars.
I was thinking they could hold up statues of MLK and some other humanitarian. Wossname Parkhurst, from the fight for women’s votes? She is foreign, and that will piss off the regressives even more.
I’ve said it before:
if he talks like a goose
walls like a goose
honks like a goose
steps like a goose
he just might be a ….
Alternatively, the monuments should be left as a warning to future generations. Perhaps a smaller budget for fencing and a series of signs:
This place is a message... and part of a system of messages... pay attention to it!Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
The form of the danger is an emanation of energy.
The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place physically. This place is best shunned and left uninhabited.
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages )
walks like a goose (typo)
A victory arch? Wow its only taken 250 years for the monarchy to defeat the Republic!
There won’t be one.
It still surprises me that so many Amercians can look at what’s going on, what’s been openly said by the Repugs and Trump and still think the next “elections” willbe anytoing other than sham rigged ones.
Too many there still under-estimate how badly they fucked up last year and how serious and grim the consequences of not electing the NON-Fascist Democratic party and Kamala when they had the chance to do so truly are. Folks, you threw away your Democracy. You won’t get it back easily. If you ever do.
Anyone who thinks there will be genuine legitimate free and fair elections under the Trump regime & likely its Christianist White Supremacist Fascist Successors simply has NOT been paying attention.
Americans should have voted for Kamala Harris – arguably maybe they actually did. Voter Suppression and Musk cheating. They should have reformed their crappy system, addding preferential or run -off electiosn al a France type voting to eliminate the spoilers and subtracting the anti-Democratic Electoral College among other reforms long ago.
Too late now. Too late.
^ a la France style see :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-round_system
Personally, I much prefer Australia’s preferential voting methodology but run-off elections French-style would definitely be a big improvement on allowing toxic utterly counter-productive spoilers like Stein & Nader to elect people like Trump and Dubya.
Ofc, the Electoral College has always meant that the USoA has NEVER truly had a proper one vote = one value, people’s votes are all equal proper election.
But now with the Trump dictatorship in charge – ruling NOT governing & for them NOT the people – there won’t even be the sad excuses for actual elections you’ve had there previously.
I have zero doubt of this reality & am genuinely surprised more Americans aren’t more awake to this. The media propaganda, poor education and poor understanding that made American voters fail last year’s test of basic intelligence and ethics seems responsible for this lack of comprehension of reality here too.
I know most USoA-icans haven’t yet grasped how very much and how very badly they’ve all just lost. Over coming years they soon will.
“…across the Potomac River on federal land inside the district’s boundaries.”
No such thing. The District’s boundaries end at the Virginia shore of the Potomac. Plenty of federal land, of course, but not within DC. Somebody swallowed a self-serving description of the location without looking at a map. Maybe he’s going to plant it in Arlington Cemetary? He could identify the graves of Democrats and cover them up, I suppose. Roosevelt Island is DC land, so maybe there, where you can look down on the Arch of Stupidity from Key Bridge, perhaps?
The proposed arch would also obstruct the view of Arlington Cemetery from the Lincoln Memorial (and vice versa), which is not only an impressive vista, it is a metaphorical connection between Lincoln and the Union soldiers who gave their lives in the Civil War.
He apparently had the model in the Oval Office when Mark Carney visited.