BREAKING: OUTRAGE! Nine Kennedy family members join lawsuit to STOP Trump's towering monument from overshadowing JFK's grave.
The giant golden monumental arch that Donald Trump wants to build to celebrate himself just got another prominent set of opponents seeking to ensure that it never actually sees the light of day.
According to The New York Times, nine members of the Kennedy family moved Tuesday to join a lawsuit trying to block Trump’s planned 250-foot triumphal arch, the one that critics call the “Arc de Trump.” The plaintiffs are children and grandchildren of Sens. Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy, who are buried near their brother, President John F. Kennedy, at Arlington National Cemetery.
The move comes after the family successfully fought against adding Trump’s name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The arch, topped with golden angels and a flame, would stand between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington. The family’s filing says it would “permanently cast a shadow over plaintiffs’ parents’ graves and the graves of servicemen and -women who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country.”
It would also block the view from JFK’s eternal flame across the Memorial Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial. The filing says that sightline was “designed to represent the unification of the nation following the Civil War” and has existed for nearly a century. Blocking it would destroy “an essential element of the gravesite’s design.”
Rory and Maxwell Kennedy, children of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, said: “A towering arch casting shadows across the graves of our father, mother and uncles, as well as the graves of so many who have served our country, would also cast a shadow over our democratic principles.”
Remember who else is a child of Robert F. Kennedy: Trump��s Health Secretary, RFK Jr. His own siblings are now in court fighting his boss over their parents’ graves.
The Kennedys are joining a crowded fight. Veterans, a historian, the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Arlington County are already suing. Last Thursday, the National Capital Planning Commission, which is run by Trump allies, gave the arch final approval. Almost immediately, Judge Tanya Chutkan blocked construction for 14 days. In a 33-page opinion, she said the arch needs approval from Congress, could be costly to Virginia and D.C., and would disrupt traffic at one of the region’s most-visited sites.
That’s the same Congress Democrats just won.
“Only Congress has the constitutional power to authorize an intrusion of this magnitude,” said the family’s lawyers, Norman Eisen and Steve Jonas of the Democracy Defenders Fund.
Look at the pattern. Trump tore down the East Wing for a ballroom. He cut down 400 trees to remake a public golf course. He has tried to put his name on the Kennedy Center. Now he wants a 25-story arch overshadowing one of the most sacred places in the country, the cemetery where America buries its war dead.
Arlington belongs to the people buried there and to the families who mourn them. It is not — and should never be — a backdrop for Trump’s ego.
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BREAKING: CALLING ALL BONE SPURS...LOL! Anonymous artists put a golden statue of Trump clutching his “bone spur” foot on the National Mall just in time for Veterans Day.
There has been no other American president as obsessed with creating grand monuments to himself as Donald Trump. Trump loves to rename existing arts centers after himself (even if they’re already named after someone else), wants to build a triumphal arch to be named after him in a place where no one else wants it, and he particularly loves golden statues of himself.
We don’t think he will love this statue created and placed on the National Mall today by the anonymous art collective The Secret Handshake.
The collective installed a gold statue on Monday called “The Foot Soldier,” showing Trump sitting down and grabbing his right foot, a reference to the bone spurs that kept him out of Vietnam. It stands near the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden and will stay up through Veterans Day.
The inscription on it is brutal. It honors Trump as “a soldier in spirit, who marched to the front lines of dodging the draft, armed with a perfect diagnosis of bone spurs.” It salutes “a leader who knows you can’t spell sacrifice without ‘I,’” and “a warrior who reminds us that sometimes when you’re called to stand up, it’s best to just sit down and rest your feet.”
The plaque also quotes something Trump himself said in 2013: “I can be very military.”
Here’s the history behind the biting satire. Trump got five deferments during the Vietnam War: four were student deferments for school, but a fifth was based on a long-disputed bone spur diagnosis. Other young men his age without a father willing to allegedly bribe a doctor for a spurious diagnosis were sent to Vietnam in his stead.
The statue also came with a mascot. A 6-foot-tall big toe named “Toey” stood next to it and mocked the president, according to The Washington Post. “Draft dodger? I hardly know her,” Toey said. Then Toey did a Trump impression: “I’m the biggest toe. The hugest toe. Huge. Hugest toe. Largest toe that anyone’s ever seen.”
The White House did not see the humor. Spokesperson Davis Ingle said, “Trump Derangement Syndrome is a sick and incurable disease that has rotted the brains of these Democrat activists.”
The artists responded: “We are honored that the White House has diagnosed us with Trump Derangement Syndrome, though we have checked and it seems like that does not qualify for us to skip out on the latest war he’s created.”
They also went straight at Iran. They said they wanted to honor “a simpler time when the President would do anything in his power to avoid military action.” Then they added: “If only his prescription for bone spurs had lasted long enough for him to consider them when invading Iran.”
That’s the part that stings. The man who found a way out of his own war has spent about nine months sending other Americans into one. At least 19 have been confirmed dead and more than 820 wounded. The Army has been practicing how to dig mass graves on the battlefield. Sailors have tried to take their own lives during deployment.
This isn’t the group’s first piece. The Secret Handshake has also previously built statues about Trump’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and a giant sarcastic “participation” trophy for the Iran war.
This Veterans Day, honor the people who actually served. The man who sat it out with a sore foot doesn’t need any monuments to help people remember his cowardice. Please like and share if you agree.