Trump Obsesses Over Triumphal Arch After Judge Blocks Construction

President Trump is still fixated on his triumphal arch even after a federal court halted its construction on Thursday. In a 33-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote that no construction can take place on the arch for 14 days while other legal proceedings play out, which she said were likely to succeed because, unsurprisingly, the Trump administration didn’t follow the legal processes before beginning the project. The ruling came hours after the National Capital Planning Commission, packed with Trump allies, voted to approve the project in an 8-4 vote, ignoring eight hours of comments opposing the measure from concerned residents, veterans, and lawmakers. But there are multiple lawsuits hoping to stop the project for good: one from a group of Vietnam War veterans and an architectural historian, as well as a joint lawsuit from the District of Columbia and Virginia governments. Meanwhile, Trump seems unphased. The official White House X account posted an AI rendering of the arch on Memorial Circle in Washington, D.C., Friday morning along with a link to triumphalarch.com, a website full of Trump’s praises and reasons for the project. The project’s opponents have complained about how the massive building will overshadow Arlington National Cemetery and obstruct the view of the Lincoln Memorial. But Trump doesn’t care about that, or what the courts say about his project. He also seems to be disregarding the message Americans sent in Tuesday’s elections, as he pushes ahead with an unnecessary vanity project and his party is left in shambles. Meanwhile, Democrats are gearing up on how to stop him. “I urge all officials and firms involved with this illegal project to consider the legal hazards they may be facing by advancing it, because, in case you hadn’t heard, we’ll soon have a new Congress that takes the rule of law very seriously,” Democratic Representative Jared Huffman warned at the planning commission meeting Thursday. Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer announced she is taking a “brief hiatus” from her Loomer Unleashed podcast just hours after a Trump administration adviser exposed her for being paid to post some of her manic, hateful content. It all started on Thursday, when Alex Bruesewitz, who is behind much of Trump’s digital media strategy, took aim at conservative social media influencers following the GOP’s massive midterm election loss. “Believe it or not attacking Democrats over their relationships with a streamer (Hasan Piker) wasn’t an effective hit,” Bruesewitz posted, not mentioning Loomer by name. “GOP candidates probably shouldn’t take messaging advice from fringe right-wing ‘influencers’ moving forward.”Loomer took the bait.“But they should take their advice and meetings with @TuckerCarlson instead?… It’s completely reasonable for people to be appalled with Democrat candidates campaigning with a guy who said America deserved 9/11. Hasan Piker regularly makes comments in support of jihadi groups,” she wrote. “What wasn’t helpful was your friend Tucker Carlson essentially endorsing Abdul El-Sayed over Mike Rogers and using his show to tell people to not support Rogers just a few weeks out from an election. But we all know you will never condemn your buddy Tucker.”“Laura, you are basically the Republican version of Hasan Piker. Democrats over the years have attacked Republicans for affiliating with you. Those weren’t effective hits either,” Bruesewitz replied. “Voters simply don’t care enough about ‘influencers’ or streamers. lol”Loomer took offense to that, claiming that she was not an influencer and criticizing Bruesewitz for his association with Omeed Malik, a conservative venture capitalist and major Republican donor. “I’m a journalist and an opposition researcher Alex. What are you? What is it that you do for Omeed Malik exactly? He’s a Muslim right? Half Iranian and half Pakistani if I’m not mistaken,” Loomer fired back. “Is that why you have such an issue with the things I say about Islam?”“Okay lol. But is it common for journalists to get paid for their opinions and tweets?”“You say ‘Okay lol.’ Not sure why you are laughing. I recall last year your company X strategies reached out to me asking me for help. Do you deny that? What is so funny? I guess I don’t get the joke,” Loomer said, admitting that she was indeed paid to tweet. “You loved sharing my journalistic reports during the 2023/2024 DeSantis-Trump primary too. What changed?”“No I don’t deny that. I’ve paid you for tweets before. I haven’t for at least a year though,” Bruesewitz wrote back. “I also know you still get paid by others for tweets so I do think it’s fair to refer to you as an ‘influencer.’ What percentage of your tweets are paid for?”Loomer had no direct response to Bruesweitz’s question, instead accusing him of having ties to the Qatari government. This a massive allegation, further confirming that much of what we see on social media is privately paid for and manufactured by people with a particular political bias. Hours later, Loomer announced a “one to two month show hiatus.”“I’m getting married, and I want to give this exciting part of my life the time that it deserves, as I’ve spent a lot of time fighting for our country, and for President Trump—sometimes at the expense of my own personal life,” she said.The hiatus, of course, also comes after Loomer posted 119 times on X in less than 28 hours following the election results, according to an analysis by Newsweek.While some online chalked up Loomer’s break to the Republican midterm upset, others noted that it also occurred right after the revelation about her undisclosed paid content. We still don’t know how much she might’ve been paid, or who else is paying her.Donald Trump was stuck in closed-door meetings through most of Thursday—but his seething anger left over from the midterm elections was still alive and well on his social media feeds.The president logged onto Truth Social around 6:18 p.m. to lament about falling stock prices.“The Stock Market suffered one of the Worst Days in History based on the results of the Election. Such a sad thing to watch!” Trump penned. “It took so much work to get us to a level that no one has ever seen before, and then this.”“Your 401(k)s have, therefore, dropped,” he continued. “Remember, it wasn’t Republicans, it was Dumocrats. Do not fear, however, we will soon, one way or the other, be BIGGER AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE.”The Nasdaq stock market took a dive this week, with tech-related companies tanking the hardest as shareholders grappled with the fallout of dozens of local data center–related ballot initiatives that largely banned or halted the development of the resource-zapping facilities across the country. But, simply put, that’s what Americans voted for.Worries over Silicon Valley’s immediate future were also triggered by numerous winning Democratic platforms, which promised to hammer down on regulations for and vote against data center construction.Trump likely felt the hurt in his wallet, as well. The president’s 2026 financial disclosures revealed sizable investments in a number of tech companies pursuing artificial intelligence projects, spending millions of dollars on stock purchases for Oracle, Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, Apple, and Alphabet.He’s also bet taxpayer money on the tech venture. Days into his second term, the president unveiled a $500 billion public-private venture to support AI development. The project was dubbed Stargate and backed by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and MGX.It’s possible that the silver spoon billionaire’s lifestyle is so far removed from the rest of American society that he simply can’t comprehend the public opposition to data centers. Trump will never be hard-pressed to find drinking water like the residents of Flint, Michigan; he apparently doesn’t have to buy (or even pronounce) America’s increasingly expensive groceries; he won’t need to split the cost of record-high gas prices at the pump between credit cards; and he will never experience the crushing toll of the housing crisis (a “big yawn,” he said in June, while profiting off it.) In August, Trump even went so far as to claim that anyone who opposes data center development is “backwards and poor.”Later Thursday evening, Trump again blamed the stock market “crash” on the election results. “So sad to see, you only have yourselves to blame!” Trump wrote.But the true source of his spiral was revealed in a third post. “I JUST WASN’T ON THE BALLOT. IF I WERE, WE WOULD HAVE WON IN A LANDSLIDE! President DONALD J. TRUMP,” he wrote.Meanwhile, Trump has no public events scheduled for Friday. In fact, the White House didn’t even post his schedule for the day.Read more about the elections fallout:Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert’s campaign said that it was “investigating some very unusual voting patterns,” as the MAGA congresswoman was on the brink of losing her reelection bid. As Democrat Eileen Laubacher’s lead over Boebert grew slightly Thursday in the race to represent Colorado’s 4th District, Boebert’s campaign released a statement suggesting foul play. Scott Gessler, the attorney for the campaign, claimed that the votes had been “trending” in Boebert’s favor since election night, “consistently lowering the margin under one percentage point.”“We are investigating some very unusual voting patterns and expect this election to head to a recount, one way or another,” Gessler continued.As of Friday morning, Laubacher was still leading Boebert 48.75 percent to 47.94 percent, with 97 percent reporting. The two candidates had a margin of 3,069 votes, more than three times the automatic recount threshold of 921 votes. Boebert’s campaign could still choose to pay for a recount.Colorado GOP chair Craig Steiner urged Republican voters Friday to cure any affidavit ballots. “Every cured ballot matters in a race this close,” he said in a statement.Read more about the elections:Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, got to take a nice birthday trip to Marrakesh, Morocco, with taxpayers helping to foot the bill.The Daily Mail reports that Trump was spotted walking through the streets of the city on October 29, one day before her forty-fifth birthday. The newspaper obtained federal records showing two Secret Service contracts adding up to $93,000 for agents to secure and stay in two five-star hotels ahead of Trump’s arrival.These included a $59,543 contract for rooms at the five-star Sofitel Marrakech, and a $33,457 contract for a Secret Service team at La Mamounia, where the Kardashian family and Winston Churchill have stayed. Those bills don’t include agents’ transportation, meals, flights, or salaries.Officially, Ivanka Trump is not a White House employee, but she is entitled to Secret Service protection as a child of the president. The trip was reportedly not long, as the Daily Mail’s source said that she returned to the U.S. in time for Tuesday’s midterm elections.Moroccan news outlet Le360 said that Trump was seen walking through Marrakech’s old neighborhoods and souks, and ate traditional Moroccan food. It’s her third visit to the country, according to the news outlet, as she visited on a diplomatic trip in November 2019 when she was an employee of the first Trump administration, and later in summer 2022 on a private trip with her husband, Jared Kushner.Ivanka Trump’s net worth is estimated at $100 million. Even though she is entitled to Secret Service protection, at a time when many Americans are struggling (thanks to her father’s policies), she should be willing to reimburse the government for all of the high-end expenses she racked up in Morocco, as five-star hotels don’t come cheap. But perhaps we should be grateful that she didn’t stay at a Trump-owned property and force the Secret Service to fork over money to the family business, like her father often does.