First it was a White House ballroom a la the Palace at Versailles:

Now he’s considering a triumphal arch, replicating France’s Arc de Triomphe:

What’s next . . . one of these?

Perhaps he’d like to tear down the Washington Monument to make room for a new sort of “Trump Tower.” After all, George Washington was one of the people responsible for signing that pesky Constitution into law. Who needs a monument to him?

Those magnificent edifices — Versailles, the Arch, and M. Eiffel’s masterpiece — belong in France; they are part of the great history of the French people. But America has its own history, and is celebrated by its own buildings, monuments and memorials: the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, the Iwo Jima Memorial, the Washington Monument, Mount Rushmore, St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, the Statue of Liberty, the Alamo, and more. We don’t need imitations of other countries’ glories.

But Donald Trump’s gold-plated imagination has no limits. And now that he has summarily fired all six members of the Commission of Fine Arts — the independent federal agency charged with advising the president, Congress and the city of Washington on “matters of design and aesthetics” — he is free to inflict his gaudy, glittery, garish, cheesy taste on the citizens of the United States as he sees fit.

He has already terminated other boards and organizations during this term, including the National Capital Planning Commission and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council . . .

No, no, no, no, no, no, NO-O-O-O-O!!!!!!!

Do NOT tell me that Trump is now planning to mess with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in his mad campaign to rewrite history according to his twisted imagination, or to suit the crazed beliefs of his Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying MAGA base.

Because that would go beyond mere trashy bad taste. That would be sacrilege, plain and simple.

That is what people like Josef Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Vladimir Putin do. It is not what people who profess to be president of the United States do.

But why else would he have fired the entire Board of Trustees, including former Second Gentleman of the United States Doug Emhoff, if not to replace them with loyalists who will do his bidding? In a statement earlier this year, Emhoff said:

“I was informed of my removal from the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Let me be clear: Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized. To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous — and it dishonors the memory of six million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve.

“No divisive political decision will ever shake my commitment to Holocaust remembrance and education or to combatting hate and antisemitism. I will continue to speak out, to educate, and to fight hate in all its forms — because silence is never an option.” [Arlette Saenz, CNN, April 29, 2025.]

*. *. *

Now he is doing the same to the Commission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission: purging them of anyone and everyone who might try to stand in the way of his bulldozing of our nation’s history in order to create his gigantic, gold-plated monument to himself.

And through all of my sadness for what we are losing and my disgust at what is being thrust upon us, I am bothered by one other thought on a more practical level: What it is going to cost the country to tear down his handiwork and restore what he has destroyed, once he is no longer in office.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
10/30/25