Trump Reveals Why He Keeps Launching New Vanity Projects

President Donald Trump admitted that he’s just building monuments to himself.

In a sprawling dispatch Friday, New York Magazine’s Ben Terris asked Trump what he made of a viral barb from Jon Ossoff, a Democratic senator from Georgia who suggested in June that the president had become obsessed with building monuments to himself because “no one will honor him when he’s gone.”

“That’s true,” Trump said. “Nobody will do it once I’m gone. When I leave here, nobody will.”

Monuments are typically something that great leaders earn by being, well, great. Trump’s comment suggests that the president is well-aware that he’s going to walk away from his two terms with few great deeds worth remembering. It also indicates that Trump has no idea there are things you have to earn, not just buy.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced Thursday that construction would begin on a “Great Triumphal Arch” in a traffic roundabout between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery. Trump has been raving about the project, nicknamed online as the “Arc de Trump,” for almost a year. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court’s conservative-majority ensured it was virtually impossible to challenge the illegal construction of a $600 million White House ballroom.

Trump has skipped work to oversee at least a dozen renovation projects around Washington, D.C.

The president gilded the Oval Office in the gaudy golden style of Mar-a-Lago, demolished the East Wing, paved over the Rose Garden, renovated columns and porticos, repaved the driveway with white granite, directed statues to receive a gold leaf makeover, built and rebuilt a helipad, re-lined the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and then had to scrape that off to re-line it again. And who can forget that he launched a months-long legal campaign to tack his name onto another man’s memorial.

Previously, a prominent clinical psychologist signaled that the president’s tireless obsession with renovations could be a warning sign of cognitive decline.

Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo was fired for leaking information about her employer to the White House, Status reported Thursday.

Bartiromo’s sudden termination stemmed from President Donald Trump’s incendiary prime-time speech in July baselessly accusing foreign agents of tampering with our last three elections. Fox News reportedly issued guidance to senior staff to avoid validating Trump’s wildly inaccurate claims on-air, resulting in a noticeable lack of coverage of the speech.

It’s not clear whether someone at the White House asked Bartiromo directly about the coverage, or if she offered the information freely. But Bartiromo told the White House all about Fox News’s guidance, disclosing confidential company information and violating the terms of her employment in the process.

Bartiromo’s departure was announced in an unusually short statement from Fox News Thursday. The next day, she wasn’t even mentioned on Mornings with Fox News, previously Mornings with Maria.

This incident indicates a stunning level of cooperation between the Trump administration and the sycophants working at Fox News. There was early speculation that Bartiromo left her position at Fox News for a role in the Trump administration, which prompts the question: why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

President Donald Trump crashed out on Thursday night after the Missouri Supreme Court struck down Republican redistricting efforts ahead of midterm elections—changing the House map after the primary and before November in an unprecedented move. 

“The Missouri Supreme Court just ridiculously ruled in favor of changing the maps back to what they were a long time ago. It’s called, Ancient History! The problem is, according to Legal Scholars, that not only was the ruling horrible, ridiculous, and unConstitutional, but there won’t be enough time to change the map back with the Election coming up in a very short period of time,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “The Election Process, as usual, is being disturbed in America! Missouri must be able to use the map that was in effect just a couple of months ago, in the Primary. This is a Dark Day for ‘Justice’ in Missouri!” 

The court’s unanimous ruling put a massive damper on the Republican race to redistrict, particularly in the bluer Kansas City region. 

“This unprecedented decision clearly violates federal law and has thrust our state into a full‑fledged constitutional crisis,” Republican state Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said. Others rejoiced, praising Missouri for not capitulating to the gerrymandering arms race that Trump started last year in a brazen attempt to win as many House seats as possible. 

“Today’s ruling affirms what we’ve been saying all along: voters should pick their representatives, not the other way around,” Missouri Representative Wesley Bell wrote on X. “Now, Missourians will finally get to have their say at the ballot in November on rejecting these partisan and unconstitutional maps. I’m proud of all of the folks who organized, called and lobbied their elected officials, and made their voices heard.  In a democracy, we’re supposed to trust the people to self-govern. Jeff City Republicans might want to take their cue from the people they allege to represent.”

Richard von Glahn, the executive director of the organization People Not Politicians Missouri, also lauded the ruling. “In a year when map-drawing has become a national weapon, courts across the country are watching what happens here,” he said in a statement. “A Missouri win for the referendum is a signal that the people still hold the power.”

Hanaway promised to appeal the ruling. 

Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee have accused Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon of trying to steal funds from the National Institutes of Health to make up for the record amount of taxpayer money they’ve spent in their war on Iran. 

Ranking member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut claimed in a Thursday press release that the Defense Department signed an interagency agreement that could give it access to billions of dollars in funding intended to go toward studies on influenza, malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and Ebola. 

“This secretive attempt to siphon research funds away from NIH is outrageous. The interagency agreement needs to be terminated immediately,” DeLauro said. “These funds were provided for lifesaving medical research, not as extra money for the Department of Defense.”

The Pentagon is running so low on money that it apparently needs to take from the NIH’s cup to buy more ammunition—to shoot down Iranian artillery that costs millions of dollars less than ours. That alone shows how devoted we are to the war machine, and how obtuse this administration’s priorities are.  

“It is no secret that the Department of Defense is facing enormous financial pressure because of President Trump’s war of choice with Iran,” DeLauro continued. “But the Trump administration cannot make American patients, families, and scientists pay the price. Circumventing Congress to divert money intended to help Americans who are exposed to … deadly diseases—and directing those funds to the Department of Defense—is beyond the pale. DoD already has programs, funded by Congress, to research and develop medical countermeasures to chemical, biological, and nuclear threats, and does not need NIH funding to do so. The administration must provide Congress with a full accounting of how this interagency agreement was developed and exactly how much taxpayer money it is trying to transfer to DoD.”

Flock Safety, the company behind the dystopian surveillance systems popping up in U.S. cities, is training law enforcement officers to use its products to surveil “No Kings” protests, 404Media reported Thursday.

In November, Caity Peak, Flock’s director of market management, led a webinar that explained how law enforcement officials could use FlockOS Real-Time Crime Centers to monitor “everything from small parades, to unexpected protests, to unprecedented disasters.” One example she used was tracking demonstrators at an anti-Trump protest.

“Now imagine that you’re an incident commander, and you’re working this No Kings protest. For the sake of the call, we put this in Denver as an example,” Peak said, explaining that an officer could review a response plan while watching live video footage of an event.

“I’ve got the video footage to monitor when things go sideways, I know when the environment is starting to shift. But I also know a lot of other things as well,” she said.

No Kings protests, which have been recurring since the beginning of the second Trump administration, are historically extremely tame, and generally attract older liberals who love America but hate Trump’s policies. The temperate collective action would likely not be far-left enough for any radical anti-fascist. Historically, it’s far more likely that counterprotesters or federal law enforcement would escalate violence at these events.

Still, the milquetoast demonstrations have managed to inspire outrage from Republicans and the Trump administration—marking their attendees as targets for the president’s police state.

Law enforcement officials, including police officers and border patrol, have used Flock’s automated license plate readers to track protesters at No Kings protests in June and October, as well as other demonstrations protected by the First Amendment, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The group found more than 50 instances of law enforcement agencies using the company’s data servers to search for activity related to protests, and specific activist groups.