Just as a preliminary matter, Donald, as ever, is pulling purported facts out of his big fat diapered ass. No, most capital cities don’t have triumphal arches, and you can take that to the bank because Google’s infallible internet-scraping AI bot says so:
But you already knew that, didn’t you, just on general principles. I love how Donald always uses the old grifter’s trick of avoiding round numbers. Round numbers sound phoney, you see. Better to claim, say, 87% than 90%, or, in this case, 59 rather than 60. Then it sounds like somebody on staff really did develop some sort of criteria for “top cities”, drew up a list, and look, by golly, 59, and only 59, made the cut. Classic.
Then there’s the limited vocabulary assertion that the conversion of a ceremonial monument into a snipers’ nest/combat drone hangar is simply acceding to the “strong request of the United States Military”. Sure, Donny. Sure. Which branch though? Probably not the Space Force. Maybe the Coast Guard? Or did all the Joint Chiefs petition you as a group? Also, you forgot to add the part where a Big Strong Army Man, tears in his eyes, approached you like a grovelling dog and said “Sir! Sir! Nobody can build a 250 foot tall combination Triumphal Arch/Remote Firebase like you can Sir!”.
While we’re at it, go ahead and take a wild guess on whether the installation of a Super Duper Way-Bigger-Than-That-Little-One-in-Paris Triumphal Arch has been “planned since the Civil War Era”.
Now, you may think it odd that Trump wants to build a sniper nest on the Virginia side of the Potomac, right in front of Arlington, from which hard point most of D.C. will be out of rifle range (the distance from the entrance to the National Cemetery to the White House is just shy of four miles). So what’s Our Donny up to here, anyway? I think it comes down to a mix of three motivations:
a) Donald knows that the construction of his latest monstrosity is going to face the same sort of legal challenges that have plagued his vulgar Giant White House Ballroom/Fortress and Drone Base, and while the verdicts of the courts have thus far been little more than widely-spaced speed bumps along Trump’s high road to self-aggrandizement, it may influence litigious outcomes if he claims that the construction has national security implications, and that might matter down the road, you never know;
b) he’s planning to remain in office past 2028, and if the Roberts Court won’t let him run for a third term – unlikely, but you have to plan for every contingency – or if, God forfend, he gets to run but loses, it’s best to have handy a few fortified locations in which he can ride out any nastiness while the coup runs its course, hence the hardened ballroom, and maybe other such gaudy bunkers to come; and
c) he is, of course, a batshit-crazy megalomaniac in the tertiary stage of cognitive decline, living in a fantasy land while exhibiting the desires and impulse control of a spoiled five-year-old, so yesterday it was a ballroom, today it’s an arch, and tomorrow, who knows, maybe it’ll be a mile-high gilded obelisk, or a dinosaur petting zoo, or an orbiting Mar-a-Lago.
Time was I would have told you that Donald, obviously on his last legs despite every rabbit the doctors at Walter Reed keep pulling out of their hats, would never live long enough to see his vanity projects completed, but yet again it looks like I was dead wrong. They’re going 24/7 on the ballroom, and it’s surprisingly well on the way, look:
…and God knows he’ll push his arch project just as hard, just as soon as he can. Maybe Trump will be there at the ribbon-cuttings, all puffed up and gloating.
In that case I hope, I pray, that Donald, ejected from office despite all his traitorous schemes to retain power, goes on living long enough to see the next Democratic President raze to the ground every fucking thing he built.
