‘Stop this now’: New details of Trump’s Arc de Triomphe spark outrage

While the White House ballroom continues to attract controversy following a fresh push from Donald Trump after last month’s shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, another construction project from the US president’s administration – an Arc de Triomphe-like structure named the ‘Triumphal Arch’ - is angering social media users.

The proposed arch would be positioned at one end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington, D.C., which the National Park Service says symbolically “[shows] the strength of a united nation by joining a memorial on the north side of the Potomac River (the Lincoln Memorial) with one on the south (Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial)”.

While the Lincoln Memorial honours US president Abraham Lincoln, the Robert E. Lee Memorial takes its name from the Confederate general and was built by enslaved African Americans.

However, a 3D model created by the New York Times reveals its potential impact on the sightline between the two buildings, noting that the Lincoln Memorial is obscured when viewing it from the entrance of Arlington National Cemetery and from Arlington House.

Looking out from the Lincoln Memorial, meanwhile, people would be able to see Arlington House positioned in the gap between the two columns.

Former US representative Barbara Comstock tweeted: “Stop. This. Now’:

Democratic candidate for Missouri, Fred Wellman, said the design was “hideous”:

And Canadian author Jeffrey Luscombe said it “looks like some piece of crap you’d find in Vegas”:

We guess you could call it a pain in the arch…

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