President Trump announced that he is building an arch near Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Memorial.
Discussing plans for the construction, Trump said the arch will be built at the Arlington Memorial Bridge, explaining that at the end of the bridge, there is “a circle that was built 150 years ago, nobody knows really when, and in fact they put a couple of columns on each side, you have two columns on one side, two columns on the other. But yet, in the middle, there’s a circle and everyone that passes it says something was supposed to be built there. But a thing called the Civil War interfered.”
Later, in 1902, President Trump described, “they were gonna put a statue of Robert E. Lee up. Would’ve been okay with me, a lot of people wouldn’t have liked it, would’ve been okay with me, would’ve been okay with a lot of other people in this room, but they didn’t do that.”
“So for years and years it sat, and every time somebody rides over the beautiful bridge going right to the Lincoln Memorial, it’s so beautiful, they literally say something supposed to be here,” he added.
The White House has also announced plans for a new ballroom.
The White House is “currently unable to host major functions honoring world leaders and other countries,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. The project will add an estimated 90,000 square feet of space and will be capable of seating 650 people.
The $200 million project is funded by President Trump and “other patriot donors,” Leavitt added. The new ballroom will be “substantially separated from the main building of the White House, but at the same time, its theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical,” she said. Its site will be “where the small, heavily changed, and reconstructed East Wing currently sits.”
