Trump says building DC triumphal arch is domestic policy chief’s ‘primary thing’

Amid concerns that he has failed to address a worsening affordability crisis, with health insurance premiums about to spike dramatically for over 20 million Americans, Donald Trump revealed on Sunday that his domestic policy chief’s main priority is building a triumphal arch for Washington DC.

Speaking at a White House holiday party, the president praised Vince Haley, his former speechwriter and a longtime aide to Newt Gingrich who now leads the White House Domestic Policy Council.

“Vince is unbelievable on policy,” Trump said. “And we have a policy thing that’s going to be unbelievable happening.”

The nature of that policy initiative might indeed be hard to believe for Americans struggling to make ends meet.

“I put Vince in charge of the triumphal arc,” Trump said, using the French word for arch. “We’re building an arc, like the Arc de Triumph,” the president added, mixing English and French, in remarks shared on social media by the White House.

“We’re building it by the Arlington Bridge, the Arlington cemetery, opposite the Lincoln Memorial. You could say Jefferson, Washington, everything, ‘cause they’re all right there,” Trump continued, referring to prominent monuments in the nation’s capital dedicated to three of his predecessors.

“And it’s something that is so special. It will be like the one in Paris,” Trump said, referring to the Arc de Triomphe, constructed between 1806 and 1836 at the western end of the Champs-Élysées, honoring those who died fighting for France in the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.

“But to be honest with you,” Trump said, the new arch Haley will be in charge of constructing will be much better than the one Napoleon Bonaparte ordered up. “It blows it away. Blows it away in every way.”

According to the president, his domestic policy chief was stunned by a model of the triumphal arch the first time he saw it.

“Vince came in one day and his eyes were teeming,” the president said, apparently reaching for the word “beaming” in his memory and not finding it.

“I mean, he couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. He saw it, and he wanted to do that,” Trump said.

“That’s your primary thing,” the president said to Haley. “There is nothing that can compete with that.”

Americans struggling with increased costs due to tariffs imposed by Trump on imported goods – or those whose health insurance premiums are set to double or triple in the coming weeks – might disagree with the president’s claim that the construction of an Arc de Triomphe knockoff should be the main focus of his chief domestic policy adviser.