Trump Promenade Plan Puts Lincoln Memorial Project at Center Stage

Donald Trump suggested a new promenade outside the Lincoln Memorial on Thursday and said the project could be called the Trump Promenade. He said the plan would take the memorial right down to the Potomac, adding the idea during a televised White House event after appearing to doze off briefly.

Trump said, "They wanna call it the Trump Promenade, but I don’t know if I wanna call it that. But it’s beautiful, it’s a beautiful project. And it’s gonna take the Lincoln Memorial right down to the Potomac."

Lincoln Memorial Plans

The proposal comes after the Trump administration spent $5 million of taxpayer money to cover four lion statues near the memorial in gold leaf, and $13 million to redo the Reflecting Pool. Trump has also proposed building a 250-foot arch that would overshadow the Lincoln Memorial, a project he said would cost at least $100 million.

Those numbers show how far the administration has already gone around the memorial area before adding a promenade to the list. The new idea would sit beside the existing proposals rather than replacing them, placing another construction plan into the same stretch of Washington, D.C.

Trump and Congress

The White House event also came after two senators, Republican Bill Cassidy and Democrat Cory Booker, joined in a court filing to block Trump’s so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund. Their amicus brief said the fund goes against the Constitution by making an end-run around Congress’s institutional authority and violating the spending, appropriations, and appointments clauses.

Trump has already granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people after his inauguration, including people who faced criminal charges for storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Against that backdrop, the promenade proposal adds another Washington project tied directly to the president’s own name and to land already carrying federal money and pending plans.

Potomac River Proposal

For readers watching the Lincoln Memorial area, the practical takeaway is simple: Trump is still floating large-scale changes there, and he has now attached his name to one of them. The latest proposal would have to move through the same federal decision-making that has already produced the gold-leaf statues, the Reflecting Pool work, and the planned arch.