President Donald Trump’s tacky gold-washed makeover of Washington, D.C., will have a “sacrilegious” impact on JFK’s memorial.
The John F. Kennedy Eternal Flame grave site in Arlington Cemetery was consecrated and opened to the public on March 15, 1967, three-and-a-half years after the former president was assassinated in Dallas.
Fast forward almost 60 years and Trump is in the throes of a battle to erect a monument to his own presidency, a gaudy 250-foot arch based on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The structure, proposed for Memorial Circle across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial, has been nicknamed the ‘Arc de Trump.’
Critics, including historians, preservationists and architects, have reservations about the arch, which Trump has said he wants to load up with drones and snipers. Two weeks ago, the administration also revealed plans to add an eternal flame atop the structure.
Chief among many concerns is how the arch will affect the memory of John F. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. president.
An analysis by the Washington Post found that, for up to nine minutes, 18 days a year, the enormous arch will cast a shadow over the eternal flame.
On some days, Trump’s proposed flame will be visible as a shadow from the arch that lurks over JFK’s light and also his grave. Jacqueline Kennedy’s birthday, July 28, would be among the dates affected.
Paul Eaton, a retired U.S. Army major general whose parents are buried in the cemetery, said a shadow covering parts of the cemetery is tantamount to “a sacrilege.”
“There are a lot of families out there who are going to visit their loved one and just be overwhelmed by the shadow of this vanity project to Trump,” he told the Post.
He was particularly perturbed to learn that Kennedy’s memorial could be affected.
The flame mattered to the president’s widow. “I care about that flame,” she said a week after her husband was killed.
“Sometimes you drive across that bridge and see that Lee mansion all lit up. That’s one of the first things Caroline [the couple’s daughter] learned to recognize. I wanted that flame.”
Trump has already sullied JFK and Jacqueline’s legacy in other ways.
He destroyed Jacqueline’s South Lawn garden to make way for his East Wing ballroom, and planted his name on the front of the biggest memorial to JFK there is: the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
A judge ordered Trump to remove his name from the facade, but the damage to the storied institution was inflicted on the inside, too. Trump installed himself as the chair of the board, MAGAfying its programming, driving away performers and audiences alike.
The center is now closed for two years. That decision came hours after U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, an Obama-appointee, blocked its board from adding Trump’s name to the building or renaming the grounds, ruling that Congress established the center as a memorial to John F. Kennedy.
The Post’s analysis, meanwhile, also found that Trump’s arch would throw shade over more than 75,000 graves, including many belonging to soldiers who fought and died for the U.S.
Minutes after it looms over the Kennedy memorial, it moves to the resting places of World War I and II veterans buried in the cemetery, lingering for more than 15 minutes.
The Post reported that it would affect the graves of veterans of the Vietnam War, Korean War, World War II, World War I, Spanish-American War, and Civil War.
Even so, White House spokesman Davis Ingle said that the arch would “enhance the visitor experience” at the cemetery.
“The Triumphal Arch in Memorial Circle is going to be one of the most iconic landmarks not only in Washington, D.C., but throughout the world,” he added.
The project faces multiple active legal challenges and pushback attempting to halt construction, but the National Capital Planning Commission is scheduled to meet on November 5 to vote on final plans.
The Department of the Interior accused the Post of biased reporting. In a statement, a spokesperson told the Daily Beast: “The ‘analysis’ run by the Washington Post is as flawed as their leftist reporting.”
They claimed standard architectural modeling shows the shadow from Trump’s arch will briefly touch only a tiny portion of Arlington National Cemetery for less than two weeks in mid-March, right after its 8 a.m. opening.
