What did Donald Trump do today?

He decided that his much-mocked "triumphal arch" was a military installation—just like his much-mocked ballroom.

Trump's plans to build a "triumphal arch" have been out of the public eye since he unveiled a scale model at his ill-fated "Great American State Fair" this summer. That hastily slapped-together structure, made of decaying plywood and featuring vinyl stickers meant to look like architectural features, probably didn't do much to spark public interest in yet another Trump taxpayer-funded building project. It was already a dud: barely one in five Americans approved of the plan to build it.

Today, Trump tried a new strategy, or rather re-used an old one: in a post on his microblogging site, he insisted that the "Arc d'Trump" was really a desperately needed military installation.

At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage. There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World. Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, D.C., IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

To be clear, Trump is absolutely lying about the military having anything to do with the "strong request" to put snipers and drones anywhere in the DC area, much less on top of an unbuilt monument.

For example, a typical sniper rifle's effective range is about 800 meters. That means that the snipers Trump wants to have permanently keeping watch over his arch would be able to target people coming out of the Metro station that serves Arlington National Cemetery, and not much else. (Even if there were some reason to keep guns trained on a cemetery, snipers don't generally want their positions advertised in advance.)

The real reason Trump is claiming that the arch would serve a double purpose as a military outpost is that the Supreme Court gave him permission to proceed with what he calls the "military top secret" part of his ballroom project—which, in practice, may let him build the whole thing. Trump had been campaigning for the ballroom since his first term, absurdly insisting that presidents going back to Lincoln had been pining for a ballroom, but were too weak to actually build one. But it was only after he'd illegally destroyed the East Wing of the White House and was facing real legal threats to constructing a new building on its ruins that he suddenly insisted it was really a military installation.

As for Trump's claim that (exactly) 58 other world capitals have a triumphal arch, he appears to be making it up. Some do, of course. Paris has the Arc de Triomphe, which was commissioned by the self-crowned emperor Napoleon as a monument to his own glory—but was never built during his lifetime because of the economic and military ruin he led France to. It was only completed thirty years later, on a different plan, with all planned references to Napoleon scrubbed away.

There's another arch in a world capital that may be more to Trump's liking, one that was built without any legislative or judicial interference, or even public opposition: the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

 

The Arch of Triumph is festooned in tributes to Kim Il-sung, the dictator of North Korea at the time it was constructed in 1986. Kim was the grandfather of Kim Jong-un, the current dictator and a very close friend of Trump, at least to hear Trump tell it.

Why does this matter?

• A president who had any real accomplishments wouldn't be so desperate to build big monuments to be remembered by. 

• It almost seems quaint to mention it, but it's not good for a president to be lying about national security, even if nobody believes him in the first place.