Trump Had Bonkers Plan to Add Giant Fist to National Arch

The “Arc de Trump” could have had a giant fist attached to it.

One design that President Donald Trump proposed for his $15 million glamor project involved placing an enormous fist atop the 250-foot Arc de Triomphe dupe, according to a new book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan titled Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump.

The fist would have served as a visual reminder of Trump’s response to his attempted assassination at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024.

“As the president showed off his models to a visitor one day in October, he puzzled over the details, including whether the arch should include a platform to take in the view,” Haberman and Swan wrote.

“Privately, he had also been asking confidants what he should have on top of the arc,” the section continues. “Should it be, he mused, a large replica of his ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ fist?”

The book also highlights the arch’s enormous size, which would “dwarf” both the original, 162.5-foot arc in Paris, which was built at the direction of Napoleon Bonaparte to commemorate the military achievements of the French empire, and the 200-foot Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, which was erected to commemorate the 70th birthday of North Korea’s totalitarian founder Kim Il Sung, as well as the nation’s resistance to Japanese occupation during World War II.

Other suggestions that have been since removed from the proposed design include a replica of Lady Liberty and a pair of eagles sitting atop the proposed arch, which would have added to its height.

The project is still going through a review cycle, but Trump officials have indicated that they want the site up and running by July 2028, six months before Trump’s term is set to end.

Trump’s arch has faced enormous opposition. If it breaks ground, it will physically situate Trump’s legacy between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, interrupting a hallowed conversation between the president that ended slavery and the soldiers that sacrificed their lives in order to do so.

The Department of Homeland Security is finally allowing the Iranian World Cup soccer team to travel to match locations a day early—something that nearly every other participating country in the tournament has been able to do. But they still won’t be allowed to stay overnight after their games on U.S. soil.

“Ahead of the match in Seattle on June 26, the Iranian team will be allowed to come in match day minus two, so two days before the match. They’ll be asked to leave the day that the match wraps up, so the evening of the match,” a DHS spokesperson told NBC. “Again, the President wants to make sure that we’re talking about what actually happens on the pitch.… A lot of that is making sure that things are safe and secure, not just around the stadiums, but around base camps and training sites.”

This decision comes after the Trump administration first denied the visas of 15—then 11—team assistants, blocking them from entering the U.S. The team itself was essentially booted from the country right after their matches in Los Angeles on June 15 and June 21, forcing them to stay in Tijuana, Mexico, rather than their abandoned base camp in Tucson, Arizona, as originally planned, or anywhere near the city they were playing in. The team also still has to go through hours of security checks each time they enter the U.S. from Mexico.

This constant back-and-forth is detrimental to both the performance and the morale of the players, who have nothing to do with America’s ongoing war on Iran.

“I think it’s not good for the football,” said team captain Mehdi Taremi last week. “In [the] World Cup, you have to prepare good for the next game, which is a lot of stress for the players and the staff and everyone. But we don’t have that support, and I think FIFA have to help us more than this. Let’s see what’s going to happen in the future.”

Iran qualified for the World Cup in the spring of 2025, months before the joint U.S.-Israeli attack that started the war in February.

A White House spokesperson flipped out Tuesday after he was quoted failing to deny a report suggesting President Donald Trump may have been given early access to a weight loss drug.

A STAT report Tuesday found that one 79-year-old man had received special access to retatrutide, a powerful new weight loss drug—prompting speculation that the individual in question was none other than the president of the United States.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai publicly lashed out at STAT’s Lizzy Lawrence, who in her original report, noted that Desai did not explicitly deny that Trump was the patient in question.

“Because this has to be spelled out for @LizzyLaw_, who has proven herself to be an unserious gossip columnist, this application was not for the President,” Desai wrote on X Tuesday after the story quickly gained national attention.

“Thank you for clarifying. I asked you, the FDA, and HHS multiple times yesterday whether this application was for the President. No one answered my question directly,” Lawrence replied.

“We shouldn’t have to bat down baseless speculation for you to not print it. Any reporter with standards would understand this,” Desai wrote. “Are you going to now go ask this idiotic question to the ~4 million Americans in this age cohort and then speculate about them being the application?”

As a White House spokesperson, it’s Desai’s responsibility to respond to queries from the press. As TNR contributor Nina Burleigh pointed out on X: “If you don’t want to do your job, maybe stop taking taxpayer funds…”

Desai did little to dismiss the story when it first came across his desk and originally referred STAT to the Department of Health and Human Services, which didn’t offer a denial either.

In fact, Desai may have fueled further questions about the president’s health. When the 79-year-old patient requested “compassionate use” access to retatrutide in April, it was to treat refractory obesity with obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension.

Asked whether Trump has obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension, Desai originally told STAT a White House memo on Trump’s most recent medical evaluation “covers this.” It does not.

Anti-ICE protesters in Texas were sentenced to at least 50 years in prison Tuesday on terrorism charges, The Guardian reported. The case was widely seen as a test of whether the Trump administration would be able to enact its crackdown on dissent over its immigration policies.

Last July 4, activists set off fireworks at a detention center in Alvarado, Texas, and some of them vandalized cars, slashed tires, and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived and drew his weapon, one person shot him in the shoulder from the woods.

Five of the protesters were sentenced to 50 years in prison and one was sentenced to 70 for providing material support to terrorists. The person who shot at the police officer was sentenced to 100 years for attempted murder, according to the Texas Standard.

President Donald Trump and his administration have claimed that the activists were part of an “antifa cell” in north Texas, even though antifa is not one specific group or organization. Most of the protesters didn’t know each other well, and were connected through a local left-wing book club and gun group.

This case was the first time that federal prosecutors have attempted to convict protesters against the Trump administration on charges related to domestic terrorism. With the White House’s attempt to criminalize protest, it likely will not be the last.

A mysterious, well-connected 79-year-old man has gained sole access to an experimental obesity drug created by Eli Lilly.

The outlet that first reported the early access, STAT, speculated that the patient could be Donald Trump, in no small part due to the president’s unabashed support for weight-loss drugs, which has extended to suggestions that he and his staff should take what he calls “the fat drug.”

In January, the president told The New York Times that while he hadn’t yet taken Ozempic or Wegovy, he “probably should.”

Trump tips the scale at 224 pounds, according to his 2025 physical results published by the White House. At six-foot-three, that puts his body mass index in the overweight category. The data suggests Trump has slimmed down since his first term: In 2020, he weighed 244 pounds, which placed him firmly within the BMI’s obesity range.

Throughout his second term, Trump has expressed a keen interest in weight-loss drugs and has even directed his administration to lower their costs.

In April 2025, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told CBS Mornings that Trump had “ordered” his department to bring the costs of GLP-1 drugs down in the U.S. to compete with European prices.

Months later, in November, Trump announced that the prescription costs of Ozempic and Wegovy would come down by hundreds of dollars if purchased through his discounted prescription drug marketplace, TrumpRx.

Trump has even used his own officials as props to promote the drugs. During the White House event unveiling the TrumpRx arrangement, Trump said he was “thrilled” with manufacturers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, and proceeded to conduct a fat-shaming round-robin of his underlings to determine who was already on the weight-loss drugs.

“Secretary Howard Lutnick. You take any of this stuff, Howard?” Trump asked his commerce secretary at the time.

“Not yet,” Lutnick replied.

“OK, good,” Trump said before going back to reading names of people on his team. “CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz—he doesn’t take it. Food and Drug Administrator, Commissioner Marty Makary, and Director of Medicare Chris Klomp. And we have Steve.… Where’s Steve? Is he here? Head of public relations for the White House? He’s taking it.”