Former President Bill Clinton opened the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, by spending his first minutes at the lectern on President Donald Trump’s plan to build a triumphal arch between Washington and Virginia — a monument the president has said would double as a military facility.
“I suppose I could take my entire allotted time to discuss the self-evident wisdom of building an Arc de Triomphe in Washington to hold all our drones,” Clinton said, as the audience laughed. “Some of this stuff — it’s hard to make up,” he added.
Inside the Arch Proposal
The plan calls for a 250-foot arch near Arlington National Cemetery, bridging the gap between Washington, D.C., and Virginia, and Trump has folded it into the celebrations marking the country’s 250th anniversary. He has said the structure would serve military purposes as well — a place to store drones and a perch for snipers. His administration has acknowledged the project will have adverse effects on the surrounding landscape. A model of the arch stood on the National Mall on July 10, the final day of The Great American State Fair.
Trump arrived at United Nations headquarters for the 81st session of the General Assembly on September 22, the same day Clinton spoke.
The Kennedy Center Name Fight
Clinton, 80, turned next to the battle over the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where a federal judge blocked an attempt by the Trump-picked board to attach the president’s name to the institution and rename its campus after him, ruling that Congress would have to approve any such change. The board has since voted to close the building for renovations. After the courts barred the renaming, Trump mused about demolishing the center outright rather than spending congressional funds to repair it, saying it could be torn down if he does not receive recognition.
Clinton dismissed the argument over the lettering as a small matter that has crowded out weightier ones. “You really think 100 years from now anybody’s going to care very much about whose name’s on what building?” he asked, adding that what happens inside the building — and outside it — counts for more.
He returned to a theme he has carried since he ran for president more than 30 years ago, telling the audience that diversity is an asset rather than a liability, that collaboration produces better results than conflict, and that nearly every challenge the world faces could be met if those in power worried less about claiming credit and did more for the least fortunate.
A Warning Against Zero-Sum Politics
Artificial intelligence occupied much of the speech, alongside Clinton’s critique of what he called zero-sum thinking among the country’s political leaders. In the nation’s 250th year, he said, American politics cannot rest on the premise that one side’s win requires the other side’s loss. He allowed that he understands the appeal: leaders around the world who have taken that approach have been richly rewarded for it, he said, and the payoff has been more apparent in the United States than in any other country.
Clinton grew blunter as the speech went on. He said there are days he can scarcely believe what is happening in a country he loves, describing people in charge who have written one standard for themselves and another for everyone else, who have turned the machinery of government into a tool for settling personal grievances, pursuing opponents and suppressing speech, and who have made federal operations a source of private profit for themselves and their allies.
“That violates the spirit and letter of the Emoluments Clause of our Constitution,” Clinton said.
He never uttered Trump’s name. Even so, the remarks ranked among the strongest critiques the 42nd president has delivered of Trump’s presidency in recent months.
A Swipe at His Own Party
Clinton did not confine his criticism to the White House. With democratic socialists and progressives racking up primary victories over the past year, he told the gathering that both the right and the left are now offering competing visions of socialism, and asked whether it should be socialism for everybody or socialism reserved for the wealthy and well-connected. He also said he rejects what he described as the politics of brute force.
Two developments, he said, left him more hopeful about the country’s direction: the backlash in Minnesota after federal agents shot two U.S. citizens during an immigration enforcement operation, and the Supreme Court’s decision, for now, to turn away the Trump administration’s proposed procedures adding new restrictions to voting by mail.
Clinton framed the moment itself as consequential, telling the audience that a lifetime offers only a handful of decisions that shape both personal history and the history of everyone around us, and that this is one of them. Both fights he singled out remain unresolved. The arch is still a proposal, its model already paraded before the public on the National Mall, and the courts have so far barred the renaming of the Kennedy Center.