The final lap of the 2020 election campaign has begun in earnest, and Republicans currently hope voters will forget about Trump’s long history of insulting active military, veterans, and our fallen heroes. The media’s attention span is so short that Republicans might even be right — except that the Eisenhower Memorial dedication on September 17 at 7pm will bring Trump’s “suckers” and “losers” back into focus. After all, as Washington Post architecture critic Philip Kennicott wrote in his August 5 review, it’s hard to imagine President Dwight D. Eisenhower tolerating:
a Republican president who avoided military service, mocked the war record of the late senator John McCain, and successfully embroiled the military in crushing a peaceful political demonstration outside the White House.
The Guardian’s architecture critic Rowan Moore chimed in on August 6:
When it comes to “heroism and greatness”, the comparison with Eisenhower will hardly be favourable to Trump.
But there is more to this story than comparing Trump to Eisenhower. Trump being Trump, there’s also a real-estate feud involved. Also, what will Trump do during the dedication ceremony?
The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial was commissioned by Congress in 1999. Its long gestation was due to funding issues and to its design, which remains controversial among conservatives. Justin Shubow, who Trump appointed to the US Commission for Fine Arts that oversees Washington DC memorials, and who drafted the wording requiring “classical architectural style” for government buildings, described the memorial’s design as “impious”, “soulless”, “ugly and offensive to the eye”, and “injurious to public morals”. And it has been criticized sharply by other conservatives.
Worse, from Trump’s point of view, is that the memorial was designed by Frank Gehry, the superstar 91-year-old architect who happens to have served in the US Third Army under President Eisenhower. Trump is rumored to hold a grudge ever since Gehry turned down a Trump project long ago — in January Gehry told NY Magazine interviewer Justin Davidson “I won’t take a job unless we get fully paid and we like the people.” And Trump cannot have been happy a decade ago when Gehry designed 8 Spruce Street in Manhattan to displace Trump Tower as the tallest residential building in New York City. In 2010 Gehry snidely said of Trump, “He's going to have to build a taller one,” but Trump never did.
Which brings us to the question: what will Trump do during the dedication ceremony? It was originally scheduled for May 8, Victory in Europe Day, and was to have featured Trump and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, along with a military flyover and 1000 invited guests. The coronavirus epidemic forced it to be postponed and scaled down. Next week’s ceremony will have just 250 guests and social distancing will be encouraged but not enforced, according to Katishi Maake in the Washington Business Journal. Fox News host Bret Baier will emcee, a recording of Rice will be played, and the featured address will be given by retiring Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), chair of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission and son of a Republican National Committee chair under Eisenhower.
Although Trump was surely invited to next week’s ceremony too, it appears he will not attend. So, what will Trump do about the Eisenhower Memorial dedication ceremony? Will he show up after all as a surprise, and turn it into a campaign event? Will he hide in the White House and pretend it’s not happening? Or will he launch a distraction to try to turn the public’s attention away from Eisenhower’s memory and from Trump’s insults of armed service members?
These questions have short fuses: in Minnesota and South Dakota, early in-person voting starts the morning of September 18, a dozen hours or so after the dedication ceremony concludes.