Caligula on the Potomac

Trump is desecrating the nation's capital monument by monument

Sabrina Haake

The South Lawn of the White House featured a huge, brightly lit metal cage called “the ​Claw,” a stage erected to showcase men beating each other bloody, Caligula style, to entertain a wannabe Roman Emperor on his 80^th birthday.

After musical performers refused to sing at the ​nation’s 250^th birthday party Trump made about himself, the UFC cage match has taken top entertainment billing. The Claw complements golden Trump statues, illegally-minted gold coins bearing Trump’s likeness, commemorative passports featuring Trump’s photo, and huge Nazi chic banners of Trump draped on the edifices of the DOJ, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Agriculture buildings.

A former FBI Director called the banners ‘sickening’ for their authoritarian symbolism.

An arch for one

Monument by revered monument, Trump is painstakingly desecrating the U.S. capital. Last week, Trump said that the 250 foot arch he is demanding as a monument to himself would be, “along with the White House Ballroom, the Greatest Structure in Washington.” His drive to overshadow national monuments to Presidents Washington and Lincoln reflects a level of delusion best described by the DSM: “Grandiosity presents an exaggerated sense of self-importance, entitlement, a constant need for admiration, and a lack of empathy …” It also presents profound disrespect for our nation’s history.

Trump’s ‘Triumphal Arch’ would obstruct the historically significant sightline between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington House at Arlington National Cemetery. Historical preservationists emphasize that the Lincoln Monument was designed so that it would forever gaze at the final resting place of over 400,000 veterans, a somber reflection on the cost of freedom. The sightline also connects Lincoln to the Robert E. Lee Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery to symbolize national unity, the post-Civil War reconciliation between North and South.

The massive scale of the arch, which will be more than double the height of the 99-foot Lincoln Memorial, would block the views along the Memorial Avenue Corridor and across the Arlington Memorial Bridge. When viewed from the Arlington House, the arch would obscure much of Lincoln’s Memorial, like someone walking in front of a movie screen and just... standing there.

To Trump, historical symbolism is noise. According to recent National Park Service documents, Trump is planning year-round, 20-hours-per-day construction on his arch, for projected completion within three years. Several years of construction all day and night, diverted traffic, and marred sightlines is extremely aggressive; one intuits that the completed arch will take less time to tear down.

Branding a nation

Trump’s handiwork on Lincoln’s Memorial Reflecting Pool isn’t much better. Trump posted a video on Truth Social showing workers draining and cleaning it, as Trump’s voice talks about “Biden filth and incompetence.” The Reflecting Pool, built in 1922 and restored in 2012, has nothing to do with Biden, who clearly competes with Trump in the rent-free occupation of Trump’s own head.

The Reflecting Pool was originally designed with a reflective surface intentionally subordinate and solemn, a dignified spatial connection between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. Trump had it repainted in circus blue, again missing the historical significance of solemnity.

The work was also performed by another of Trump’s overpaid no-bid contractors. Trump said he handpicked Atlantic Industrial Coatings because they had done work on his personal swimming pool at the Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia. 

Shortly thereafter, perhaps realizing that ‘I hired my pool guy’ was not the best justification, Trump did an about-face and claimed he had never used the firm’s services before. After the contract was awarded, bypassing standard competitive bidding channels, the cost ballooned from initial estimates of under $2 million to $13.1 million.

What will the future say?

Trump lawyers recently argued in federal court that they could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and the courts couldn’t do anything to stop them. 

A man who slapped his name on steaks, vodka, a fake university, candles, soaps, NFTs, casinos, and an airline that went bankrupt has now upgraded to more durable media on the public dime: marble, federally funded, and gold, omnipresent. 

Trump has redecorated the Oval Office with heavy gold filigree, including gold cherubs, gold trim, and gold furniture. His gold overkill aesthetic, reminiscent of Versailles just before the French monarchs were beheaded, proves that Trump’s historical ignorance isn’t confined to American history.

Congress, not the president, controls federal property, but Trump doesn’t want to work with Congress, preferring to rebrand DC in his own personal, bawdy image. 

The National Trust has sued, arguing that the White House grounds, a designated national park, cannot be updated without congressional approval and that the park, like Yellowstone, can’t simply be repurposed at one man’s whim. That suit is pending.

Future generations will study this era and learn many things. They will learn about the fragility of democracy, and the extraordinary load-bearing capacity of our capital’s foundation, now bearing the weight of history, the republic and Trump’s self-regard.

E Pluribus Unum. Out of many, one. And that one would really like his own monument.

Sabrina Haake is a political analyst and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1^st and 14^th A defense. She writes the free Substack, The Haake Take.