America Fought to Defeat Fascism. This ‘Triumphal Arch’ Reeks of It.

The Washington Post

12:40 JST, April 11, 2026

Donald Trump’s giant victory arch appears to have an official name. Since October, when the president showed preliminary designs for a gigantic arch proposed for a traffic circle near Arlington National Cemetery, the monument has been referred to variously as a triumphal arch, the Independence Arch and the Arc de Trump. The last of these isn’t entirely a joke. When asked whom the arch would honor, Trump said: “Me.”

But renderings of the arch, submitted to the Commission of Fine Arts in advance of its discussion of the project Thursday, refer to it as the Triumphal Arch. And it will be as big as feared – 250 feet high – larger than arches of antiquity, taller even than ghastly monuments to authoritarian triumphalism, including the victory arch in Pyongyang, North Korea.

It is an insult to the men and women who risk their lives to protect democracy, who have fought in wars against fascism, who have actually achieved victory rather than merely declared and celebrated it. Its symbolism is borrowed and confused, and it will block a sacred vista that connects the Lincoln Memorial to the final resting place of the Civil War dead, and veterans from every major war and conflict this country has fought.

The main body of the arch will rise 166 feet from an elevated base. Atop that will be a 60-foot-tall gilded statue that looks like an AI-mash-up of the Statue of Liberty holding a torch and the Greek goddess of victory, Nike, resembling in its glittering ostentation the statue atop a victory column in Mexico City erected by the brutal dictator Porfirio Díaz in 1910. The design of the arch is a little simpler than some of the more garish proposals Trump floated earlier. Gigantic Corinthian columns have been removed, and there are no longer gilded statues in the niches on the two main supporting legs.

But there is no lack of gilding in other places, including the ornamental relief on the face of the attic, with lettering spelling out “One Nation Under God” and “Liberty and Justice For All,” and on the four sculpted lions that flank the arch. The lions seem to be borrowed from the beloved statues at the entrance to the New York Public Library. Why? Why not.

Trump set his mind on a Roman victory arch after visiting the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and the design is a hodgepodge of borrowed elements. The 250-foot height is left over from an earlier idea that the monument would honor the 250th anniversary of American independence, and the phrase “one nation under God” only gained wide currency in the United States during the 1950s, when it was added to the Pledge of Allegiance after pressure from Christian groups. It will technically be in the District of Columbia, but on the southern side of the Potomac River, disrupting the symbolism of Arlington Memorial Bridge, which was part of a grand symbolic design that honored post-Civil War reconciliation.

But the symbolism and the details, and even the size of the monument, matter less than the mere fact that it perverts a fundamentally American idea about war. We have fought them, we have died in them, and we have brought war to too many people who did not deserve our meddling with their politics and sovereignty.

But no matter the cause, no matter how great the victory, we fundamentally honor sacrifice and service. We celebrate the end of wars and the achievement of peace, not victory. Roman victory arches are lovely to look at, but they were primarily political statements, assertions of personal power and propaganda by ambitious men.

When Abraham Lincoln entered war-ravaged Richmond on April 4, 1865, he came with about a dozen sailors. It wasn’t a parade. When asked how the defeated South should be treated, he said, “Let ’em up easy.” In the renderings submitted to the CFA, it is clear that not only will the arch block the view that connects the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington Cemetery, it will also frame perfect views of Arlington House, the Greek revival mansion on a hill owned by the slaveholding traitor Robert E. Lee.

If this is a victory arch, what victory is being honored?

The question is all the more pressing given the current moment, when the United States is at a stalemate with Iran, which it has brutalized but not defeated. Like the president’s statements about the war, including a ghastly threat to annihilate the entire civilization of Iran, the rhetoric of this arch is all about escalation. The primary element of its design is its colossal scale, as if being big can compensate for being confused.

And so, like Trump’s declarations of victory, this arch is merely loud, not clear or confident. When people die, we say RIP, for the Latin “requiescat in pace,” an old prayer: Rest in peace. The men and women who lie in Arlington have earned that peace, and they deserve our quiet, humble gratitude, not this monstrous monument to power, war and one man’s ego.