Trump’s New Defense Of The Arch Is INCREDIBLY Stupid

Bulwark Takes

Sam Stein and Will Saletan critique Donald Trump's proposal to build a 250-foot triumumental arch near Arlington National Cemetery intended for

Key takeaways

Trump proposes a 250-foot triumphal arch at the Arlington Memorial Bridge circle to house drones and snipers.
The plan includes storing sniper ammunition in the structure's plaza and roof areas.

Main topics

Trump's Triumphal Arch proposal
Military drones and snipers in D.C.

Notable quotes

We are firmly on the slope of authoritarianism.

Conclusion

The episode warns that recent actions regarding both physical monument

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) All right, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, again, with my man, my partner in Sunday afternoon YouTube crime, Will Salatin. Speaker 4 (0:08) Will, how you doing? Oh, Sam, I'm doing all right, buddy. How are you? Speaker 3 (0:12) I'm holding up. I'm holding up. I just did a recording with Mark Palmaropoulos where we talked about all the horrifically awful things happening across the globe, like the deeply foreboding warning signs happening in like Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Europe, et cetera. I needed a little bit of light fare. And so we're going to switch to Donald Trump and the arc. I mean, what is going on here? Did you see the tweet this morning? Speaker 4 (0:39) I did. I did. Don't you think, Sam, that he's going for the light fair? I mean, here he is sitting in this complete S show that he's created all over the world. And so he needed something light. And so he tweeted Speaker 3 (0:52) about the arch. All right. Let's talk to people about this is Trump on the arch. This morning on True Social, he says this. At the strong request of the United States military and for national security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War era many years ago at the receptive circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top-grade military complex slash Triumphal Arch to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones. plus snipers on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage. There'll be no facility like this anywhere in the world. No kidding. Out of the 59 top cities and capitals, Washington, D.C. is the only one in the world that does not have a triumphal arch, but it will now, and by far the greatest of them all. Thank you for this attention. So I have a lot of, I can foresee a lot of problems with Speaker 4 (1:50) this. So many questions, Sam. So many questions. Questions and problems. Yes. Speaker 3 (1:54) Do you want to go? You go with your top question. Can I Speaker 4 (1:57) just start with what's in the social media and the truth post here? Yeah. The sniper. We're Speaker 2 (2:02) going Speaker 4 (2:02) to have drones and snipers. We're not going to put them in some hidden place where we can, which is where you would normally put drones and snipers. We're going to build a giant structure right across the river. We're going to put it 250 feet in the air. We're going to put some snipers up there to shoot at what, Sam? Are they guarding Arlington National Cemetery? What is it like? We're going to put drones. Oh, by the way, what's this business about the plaza? We're going to put snipers in the plaza. So we're going to put a giant arch across the river next to Arlington Cemetery and the Potomac and a bridge, nothing else. And we're going to put some snipers down there who they've got nobody to shoot at, Sam. They're just. We're going to put them on the ground. We're going to put them in the plaza. So like, who does this? It's completely insane. He says this was the strong request of the military. I mean, that's like on its face, completely absurd. No, the military. Oh, see, I disagree. Seriously? That Speaker 3 (2:59) part I disagree with. Everything else I agree with. Well, first of all, okay, so I'm just trying to think about this in my head. The storage for the ammunition, I assume, is going to be on the columns of the arch? Or is it in the top of the arch? Those are going to be like the Speaker 4 (3:14) clips. Those are like the clips, the columns. Will Speaker 3 (3:17) guns come out of the top of the arch like a transformer type thing? And the drones, are they kind of rested on the top? Or are they tucked underneath and they kind of have a hatch and they come out? But the big question I have, or the big issue I have with this, beyond the absurdity, Speaker 3 (3:37) Do you know how close this thing is to Reagan? We're just going to launch drones. It's like literally planes are flying over this thing all day, every day. We're going to just Speaker 4 (3:49) launch a bunch of drones. This is like for people who don't know the geography of Washington, D.C. This is you couldn't do worse in terms of like this is literally where the planes fly over. They're coming down over the river. Yeah. You're going to fire. You're going to start at 250 feet. That's where you're starting. And then you're going to fire the drones up from there where we just had like a helicopter plane crash. And how many crashes have we had recently over coming into Reagan? I can't even keep Speaker 3 (4:15) track. It's bad. And I guess, you know, I didn't pick up on the plaza snipers. But the Plaza Snappers is really interesting. So you have a circle, an arch, and then obviously everything else is the plaza, right? Like you could go under the arch and through it and you can kind of walk around it. But like, where are they going to be?