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Friday, July 03, 2026
ANNALS OF TRUMPI$TAN: D.C. official tells Trump to build his arch somewhere else. (Dan Diamond & Jonathan O'Connell, WaPo, July 2, 2026)
Three cheers for the Honorable David Maloney, the Washington, D.C. Historic Preservation Officer (HPO). D.C. HPO David Maloney modestly suggests a better central location for DONALD JOHN TRUMP's proposed arch.
Let's do it right, in the right location, not at Arlington Memorial Cemetery.
Like an overconfident real estate developer on psychotropic drugs, like an octogenarian "Snidely Whiplash" cartoon character, DJT appalls and alarms.
Untetered to truth or law, DJT goes careening from notion to nostrum to national disgraces.
Our Nation grimaces.
The late power-mad U.S. Secretary of State, Nobel Peace Prize winner and alleged war criminal, Heinz Alfred Kissinger said, "the illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer." (August 29, 1967 Henry Kissinger quote from Neil Gorsuch's college yearbook entry.
From The Washington Post:
D.C. official tells Trump to build his arch somewhere else
The city’s historic preservation officer criticized the president’s plan to build his towering arch in Memorial Circle, suggesting the administration should pick a spot near Nationals Park.
The Trump administration should pick an “alternative site” forPresident Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch, a Washington, D.C., official told the administration last month, warning that Trump’s plan to build the structure by Arlington National Cemetery would be “divisive.”
David Maloney, the city’s historic preservation officer, said the plan to build in Memorial Circle — a traffic roundabout across the river from the Lincoln Memorial — would “severely damage an exceptional cultural landscape and one of the most important symbolic places in the nation.”
Maloney instead suggested a different spot that he said would be a better fit for the towering arch: an empty traffic oval located on South Capitol Street between Nationals Park and Audi Field.
“It would create an energizing focal point for a still-emerging neighborhood, suitable for a celebratory crowd,” Maloney wrote to the National Park Service in a June 26 letter posted by a federal commission reviewing the project. An arch located there could become a symbol of “sports triumph” linked with the nearby stadiums, he said, “and importantly, it would enhance the historic L’Enfant Plan and the city’s monumental landscape rather than detracting from it.”
Rodney Mims Cook Jr., a Trump appointee who chairs the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, had previously identified that site as a prospective location to build a triumphal arch.
D.C. officials say Trump's proposed triumphal arch could be built on South Capitol Street near the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
Washington Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s office declined to comment on the proposal from Maloney, who has served as the city’s historic preservation officer since 2007. The historic preservation office does not always speak for the mayor and has some degree of autonomy in its work, city officials said.
Maloney told the Park Service on Thursday afternoon that his suggestion to build the arch on South Capitol Street “was not an endorsement of locating an arch at this location,” according to an email obtained by The Washington Post. He added that he was not intending to speak for “the larger District government.”
Bowser has sought to strike a balance with Trump as he attempts to remake parts of Washington, encouraging him to tend to long-delayed repairs to local fountains. She has avoided public battles with the president over some of his more controversial changes to the city and its historic buildings, such as Trump’s demolition of the East Wing to build an expansive White House ballroom.
Trump last year proposed building a triumphal arch to honor the nation’s 250th anniversary, arguing that it was an overdue addition to Washington.
“We’re the only important and major city that doesn’t have one,” Trump said in the Oval Office in May. He also touted his plan to make it bigger than the 164-foot-tall Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
“We have to do slightly larger … otherwise you’d all be disappointed in me,” the president said, alluding to his propensity for large construction projects. “But it’s even far more beautiful.”
Historic preservationists and advocacy groups have opposed the project, warning that the large arch — Trump’s most significant effort to change Washington’s skyline — would alter the city’s historic views.
Trump’s motorcade drives past his proposed location for the triumphal arch last month. (Tierney Cross/Pool/For The Washington Post)
Military veterans also have sued to block it, warning that the towering structure would harm their experience of visiting the nearby national cemetery. A federal judge is weighing the case.
The Commission of Fine Arts, which Trump has packed with allies, has approved the project. A second federal panel, the National Capital Planning Commission, is scheduled to weigh the proposal July 9.
Federal officials have also laid out an aggressive timetable to potentially complete work on the arch before Trump’s term ends, which would involve 20 hours per day of construction on the arch, year-round.
Maloney, who declined an interview, has also questioned the Trump administration’s process to build the arch, criticizing the 10-day window for public comment. He also said that outside experts had been wrongly excluded from a federally required process, known as a Section 106 review, to consider the arch’s potential effects on historic properties.
Trump officials have declined to include a half-dozen historic preservation and advocacy groups in the process. All of the excluded organizations, which have historically offered input on past federal projects, have sued the Trump administration over the president’s construction and renovation projects.
The review process “is clearly an exercise designed to shield this controversial project from genuine public and expert scrutiny, rather than to reduce its harmful impacts on our shared heritage, which is owned by the public,” Rebecca Miller, the executive director of the DC Preservation League, wrote in a June 15 letter to the Park Service.
Maloney also warned that Memorial Circle is somewhat removed from Washington’s downtown, limiting potential visitors if an arch is built there. He compared it to the sites of other major memorials — such as the Arc de Triomphe in Paris and the 9/11 Memorial in New York City — that are better woven into their city’s fabric.
What readers are saying
The comments overwhelmingly criticize the proposal to build a triumphal arch in honor of Donald Trump, with many expressing disdain for the idea and suggesting alternative, often sarcastic, locations such as landfills or his golf courses. Commenters argue that the arch would... Show more
This summary is AI-generated. AI can make mistakes and this summary is not a replacement for reading the comments.
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