Trump says building DC triumphal arch is domestic policy chief’s ‘primary thing’ | Donald Trump
Amid concerns that health insurance premiums for more than 20 million Americans are about to rise dramatically, failing to address a worsening affordability crisis, Donald Trump declared on Sunday that his domestic policy chief’s main priority is building a triumphal arch for Washington, D.C.
Speaking at a White House holiday party, the president praised his former speechwriter Vince Haley. Newt Gingrich’s longtime aide he currently leads the White House Domestic Policy Council.
“Vince is incredible on policy,” Trump said. “And we have a policy thing that is going to be incredible.”
The nature of this policy initiative may indeed be hard to believe for Americans trying to make a living.
“I put Vince in charge of the victory arc,” Trump said, using the French word for arch. “We are building an arc like the Arc de Triumph,” the president added, mixing English and French. shared on social media by the White House.
“We’re building this across from the Arlington Bridge, the Arlington cemetery, the Lincoln Memorial. You can call it Jefferson, Washington, everything because it’s all there,” Trump said, referring to landmark monuments in the nation’s capital dedicated to three of his predecessors.
“And this is something very special. It will be like in Paris,” Trump said, referring to the Arc de Triomphe, which was built between 1806 and 1836 at the western end of the Champs-Élysées in memory of those who died fighting for France in the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars.
“But honestly, the new arch that Haley will be responsible for building will be much better than the one that Napoleon Bonaparte ordered,” Trump said. “It blows it away. It blows it away from every angle.”
According to the president, the domestic policy chief was stunned when he first saw the model of the triumphal arch.
“Vince came in one day and had tears in his eyes,” the president said, apparently searching his memory for the word “irradiation” but couldn’t find it.
“I mean, he couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. He saw it and wanted to do it,” Trump said.
“That’s your primary job,” the President told Haley. “There’s nothing that can compete with that.”
Americans struggling with rising costs due to Trump’s tariffs on imported goods (or whose health insurance premiums will double or triple in the coming weeks) may disagree with the president’s assertion that building a mock Arc de Triomphe should be the chief domestic policy adviser’s main focus.
