While the legal fight over President Donald Trump’s bribe palace ballroom—which is apparently now just a lid for a military complex—is currently taking up the most oxygen, Trump slipped some multimillion-dollar treats for himself into the National Endowment for the Humanities spending plan.
Yes, your tax dollars—$15 million, to be exact—are going to fund Trump’s gross “Arc de Trump.”
Additionally, $17 million of your NEH tax dollars are going to fund Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes. But wait, there’s more! That $17 million is being matched by another $17 million of your National Endowment for the Arts tax dollars.
President Donald Trump holds renderings of his ballroom on Oct. 22, 2025.
NEH happens to have a lot of money to play with, thanks to two DOGE bros who canceled more than $100 million in NEH grants. And make no mistake: This arch is for Trump, and not just because he’s the one demanding it. When CBS News asked Trump who the arch was for, he literally pointed to himself and said, “Me.”
Sure, Trump said that the arch was "fully financed" back in October and that if he had any leftover ballroom bribes, er, donations, they would go toward funding the arch. But as it turns out, “fully financed” meant financed by us.
It’s genuinely terrifying that, even as his war in Iran rages so out of control that he’s now threatening to literally end an entire civilization, Trump still has time to show off his little construction projects.
On Easter, the same day he posted an absolutely unhinged message on Truth Social, demanding Iran to “open the Fuckin’ Strait” or he would do some war crimes, Trump made time to have his motorcade do a drive-by of the site of his arch. And during an Easter event at the White House on Monday, he showed off some drawings of the arch.
It isn’t clear if Trump’s latest plans reflect his goal of making the arch so large that it would dwarf the Lincoln Memorial, but come on—he’s building a 90,000-square-foot ballroom that’s nearly twice the size of the White House.
President Donald Trump holds a picture of his arch during the White House Easter Egg Roll on April 6.
While we don’t know actual details—because these days large-scale government construction is just done by vibes—it appears that the arch would be 165 feet tall and 165 feet wide, or 66 feet taller and 45 feet wider than the Lincoln Memorial.
There’s a lawsuit attempting to head off the arch at the pass, and the White House pinky promises that it won’t build anything until the National Park Service okays it, but there’s literally no reason to trust anything this administration says.
Trump is also insisting that the arch does not require congressional approval, which is pretty much his stance on everything. He said that he’ll have the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission review the plans for the arch, but he’s stacked both of those with pets who will give him whatever he wants.
If Trump actually manages to erect this monument to his ego, it will be just another thing to add to the list of things that Democrats must tear down whenever they regain power.
All of these gilded monstrosities, intended to memorialize a toddler madman, cannot stand.
