David A. Fahrenthold

My reading of it is that he wants an arch.

He's talked about how all great cities have arches, London, Paris, Rome.

And so Washington needs one.

And this is the easiest place to put an arch because it's a big, empty lawn around which traffic flows.

What President Trump says this arch is meant to celebrate is all of us, the 250 years of American history.

But it seems in some ways to be more a monument to President Trump and his importance in American history.

To the degree that there's any singular person or cause associated with this arch,

I think you are right that if it is built within a few years, everybody will think of it as part of the scenery in Washington.

Nobody will walk by and say, you know, it doesn't belong.

It is the same architectural style as the rest of Washington.

So it will stand out for its size, but not for its architecture.

The one thing that I think is different from the other monuments that have caused consternation in Washington over the years, and I think of not just the World War II Memorial, but the very modernist Vietnam War Memorial before that, is that those other monuments were monuments to a group of people, people who had sacrificed something.

What's slightly different about this is that there's not like one set of people this is designed to honor or one set of people who will come here and feel like, yes, I have my place in Washington that I didn't have before.

It's either totally abstract or it's about trauma.

Well, traditionally, we have not let presidents build their own memorials.

Traditionally, you have to leave office.

There has to be some sort of intervening period in which Americans and American history can judge your time in office and decide whether you are worthy of a monumental tribute.

Right, and how that monument relates to the way we think of you.

Right.

We don't give every president.