Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced this week that excavation work for the Great Triumphal Arch on Columbia Island will begin within two weeks. The site overlooks Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial. Before the first shovel hits dirt, Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego is already drawing up the demolition plans.
He went on CNN with Jake Tapper and volunteered — unprompted — that the next Democratic president should tear it all down.
"I think I'd be advocating for almost all of that," Gallego told Tapper, referring to reversing Trump's construction projects. The "almost" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. He didn't specify which project he'd graciously allow to survive.
Gallego called the arch "this ugly monstrosity" and claimed it desecrates Arlington National Cemetery. He went further, saying the next Democratic president should go on a broader erasure campaign: "We need to be taking down all these, you know, honorific situations or emblems of him."
The full wish list includes the Great Triumphal Arch on Columbia Island, the White House Ballroom, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool restoration, and the Kennedy Center renaming. So not just the arch. Everything. Every brick, every renovation, every restored reflecting pool. All of it has to go because the wrong president authorized it.
Gallego's stated reasoning is worth reading in full. "The real stain that this president has put on this country has been the fact that he eroded democracy," he told Tapper. The senator from Arizona believes the appropriate response to alleged erosion of democracy is for the next president to unilaterally demolish publicly funded construction projects because he doesn't like who ordered them.
That's not defending democratic norms. That's the kind of thing that happens after a regime change in a country we'd send peacekeepers to.
The Reflecting Pool restoration is a particularly interesting target. It's a repair of existing infrastructure at the Lincoln Memorial. Gallego apparently believes Abraham Lincoln's memorial should deteriorate rather than be maintained by an administration he disapproves of. The pool was built in 1922. But the wrong guy fixed it, so now it has to go back to being broken.
Columbia Island sits between Arlington National Cemetery's Section 60 — where post-9/11 service members are buried — and the Lincoln Memorial. Gallego looked at that geography and decided the construction project honoring American greatness is the desecration, not the senator going on cable news to campaign for its destruction before the concrete sets.
Gallego wasn't cornered into these statements. He wasn't caught on a hot mic. He sat down, looked into a camera, and told the country that the Democratic Party's official position is preemptive demolition of the current president's public works.
Most politicians at least wait for something to be finished before they promise to tear it down. Gallego can't even manage that. The excavation hasn't started. Burgum announced a two-week preparation timeline. And Gallego is already on CNN with the wrecking-ball pitch.
He didn't mention what he'd replace any of it with. No alternative vision. No competing project. Just removal. Take down the arch, undo the ballroom, un-rename the Kennedy Center, let the Reflecting Pool crack again. The platform isn't "we'll build something better." It's "we'll make sure nothing he built remains."
That's not a governing philosophy. That's a spite list with a Senate letterhead.
