Jimmy Kimmel delivered a brutal roast of Donald Trump’s plans to recreate Paris’s Arc de Triomphe in America, finding one major flaw in the president’s proposed replica.
“The Arc de Triomphe has the names of generals who fought and died for France engraved on its face,” Kimmel explained. “Ours will have the name of the draft dodger who killed America on it.”
Trump’s “Triumphal Arch” has been touted by the president as one that will rival France’s neoclassical monument, which was built in the 1800s. “The one that people know mostly is the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, and we’re going to top it by, I think, a lot,” Trump said in December. “The only thing they have is history.”
The Arc from which Trump clearly drew his inspiration was made to honor the soldiers who fought and died for France during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Meanwhile, Kimmel points out, Trump never served in the military and dodged the Vietnam draft five times.
But, as the 79-year-old president himself admits, the arch he envisions will honor only himself.
Kimmel roasted the president’s grand plans for the monument, a 250-foot arch to be built near Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” the late-night host said. “It strikes the perfect balance between Scientology and Liberace that we have come to expect from our president.”
“It will be situated near Arlington National Cemetery, the burial site of thousands of American soldiers whose fathers weren’t leasing office space to a podiatrist,” he continued.
The arch, complete with gold renditions of Lady Liberty, two American eagles, and four lions, has been widely criticized. “Trump’s arch is opposed by a lot of people, including a coalition of veterans and preservationists. They are his arch arch-nemeses, if you will,” Kimmel said.
In February, a group of Vietnam army veterans and a retired architectural historian filed a federal lawsuit against the president and the White House to block the “vanity project” from being built. The veterans alleged that the monument would “dishonor their military and foreign service.”
Even the architect who encouraged Trump to build the structure in the first place has concerns.
“I was proposing a celebratory project,” Catesby Leigh told The New York Times. “An arch of not titanic dimensions; an arch that could be built by July 4, 2026. And if the arch were considered to be of enduring value in its design, then it could be rebuilt in permanent form.”
Leigh added that the arch is “way too big” for the roundabout by Arlington Cemetery.
Despite public pushback, the Commission of Fine Arts gave preliminary approval for the president’s designs on Thursday. The seven commissioners were all appointed by Trump.
Commission Chair Rodney Mims Cook Jr. said of the project, “This is personal to everyone in the room, and the president wants to do something that in his heart he feels is good. This is really important to all of us, and we have to get this right.”
According to Politico, Cook became emotional as he recited words from President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, honoring the soldiers who died for the country.
Kimmel lambasted the intention to have the structure near Arlington National Cemetery, which was built during the Civil War.
“Arlington, it’s a beautiful place. It’s set up uniformly so that each grave is given equal significance,” Kimmel told his audience of the site. “Until now. Now, this will loom above it all.”
