In mid-October, US President Donald Trump unveiled plans for a new monument in Washington, DC – a triumphal arch he intends to call the Arc de Trump. Inspired by Paris’s Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the project is set to be built at the end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, facing the Lincoln Memorial across the Potomac River. Trump says it will commemorate America’s 250th anniversary in 2026.
According to his remarks at a White House dinner, the monument will be privately funded. A model by Nicolas Leo Charbonneau, an architect at Harrison Design, shows the monument on the Virginia side of the river, near Memorial Circle, where visitors cross from Arlington National Cemetery into the capital. ‘Every time somebody rides over that beautiful bridge to the Lincoln Memorial, they literally say that something is supposed to be there,’ Trump told donors.
The site overlooks Arlington House, which was once the residence of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Trump noted that a statue of Lee had once been planned for the site, and told his guests that “it would have been OK with me – would’ve been OK with a lot of the people in this room”, as reported by The Guardian.
Q: What is this, Mr. President?
— Molly Ploofkins (@Mollyploofkins) October 16, 2025
Trump: It’s going to be built—an arc. Take a look at the location.
Q: Yeah, no, I know where it is, but who’s it for?
Trump: Me. It’s going to be beautiful.
Reporter: The Arc de Trump? pic.twitter.com/XwXG96sZpl
He showed three 3D models – “small, medium, and large” – each of which was topped by a gold Lady Liberty figure, and said he ‘”happened to prefer the large one”.
At the same dinner, which was held to celebrate the financing of his $250 million White House ballroom, Trump suggested that any leftover funds could help to pay for the arch. The ballroom, the largest addition to the residence in a century, can host 1,000 people. Guests reportedly included executives from Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin, as well as the Winklevoss twins.
“So many of you have been really generous,” Trump said, quoted in The Guardian. ’Couple of you I have sitting said: “Sir, would $25m be appropriate?” I said: “I’ll take it.”
Although no cost or start date has been released, Trump hopes to finish before the semiquincentennial, a goal deemed unrealistic by experts, as any new memorial must undergo an extensive approval process involving the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), the Commission of Fine Arts, and Congress.
Preston Bryant, a former NCPC chair, told the BBC he finds “it hard to imagine that this arch will be designed, approved and constructed by 4 July next year.”
While federal law bans large new monuments on the National Mall, the area across the river may qualify if the project is deemed to have “pre-eminent historical and lasting significance”.
@trtworld To mark the 250th anniversary of the United States, President Donald Trump has unveiled another major construction project in Washington, DC. The monument has been dubbed the “Arc de Trump” — a nod to the “Arc de Triomphe” in Paris — after Trump told a reporter in the Oval Office that it would be built for “him”
♬ original sound – TRT World
The Arc de Trump is part of a wider redesign of the White House, which includes new marble floors, a repaved Rose Garden, and a ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’ featuring gold-framed portraits of Trump and the 44 other presidents. Biden’s official portrait has been replaced by an autopen.
On Trump’s desk in the Oval Office today was a plan for a triumphal arch on the other side of the river from the Lincoln Memorial pic.twitter.com/PyulIhlmHE
— Danny Kemp (@dannyctkemp) October 9, 2025
Foreign leaders, including Finland’s Alexander Stubb and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, have been given a tour of the refurbished interiors, which are said to echo the décor of Mar-a-Lago.
Not everyone is impressed, however. A guest essayist in The New York Times recently dubbed Trump’s Oval Office overhaul ‘a gilded rococo nightmare’.
Perhaps none of this should come as a surprise. After all, Trump is a second-generation real-estate developer with towers, hotels, and golf courses across the globe. If built, the Arc de Trump would stand not only at the gateway to Washington but as a monument to a presidency that has never quite decided where leadership ends, and self-worship begins.
