Getting Into ‘Good Trouble’ Over Arc de Trump

A retired Army colonel flew in from Hawaii to make sure Trump’s arch doesn’t go up quietly

By Jonathan Capehart, Substack

On the Virginia side of the Arlington Memorial Bridge sits a large grassy circle that slings traffic back into Washington or up to Arlington National Cemetery. On most maps it isn’t even labeled. But it has a name — Memorial Circle —and it is where President Trump wants to erect another one of his vanity projects: a monstrous 250-foot arch called the United States Triumphal Arch and others have taken to calling the Arc de Trump. It would block the sight line from the Lincoln Memorial to the cemetery, not to mention overshadow the entrance to sacred land.

Usually, there is no one inside that grassy circle. But today, there were eight people with signs expressing their displeasure with the impending arch. I couldn’t resist a diversion from my morning walk to talk to them.

As I approached the group, I identified myself as an anchor at MS NOW and asked if I could ask them some questions. As excited as they were to see me, most of them weren’t too keen on talking or being identified. Except one: Ann Wright.

Clad in a tan baseball cap that read US Army Retired, the first thing Wright told me before even telling me her name was that she came to this spot all the way from Hawaii. Of course, I asked her to tell me more.

“My name is Ann Wright. I’m a retired Army colonel and former U.S. diplomat. I resigned in 2003 in opposition to the war in Iraq. I live in Hawaii and I was so fed up with hearing about the possibility of Arlington Cemetery being desecrated by this vanity arch by Trump that I flew here, made some banners,” she said, reading off the banner pictured below. “We don’t want that arch here or anywhere, but particularly right here where ‘Mr. Bone Spurs,’ who never served a day of his life in the military, is going to have it, right next to Arlington Cemetery.”