Trump calls his 250-foot arch “slightly larger” than the 164-foot Arc de Triomphe

Donald Trump has never met a measurement he couldn’t round in his own favor, and on Saturday he did it to a monument that doesn’t exist yet.

At his Mar-a-Lago Halloween party, a reporter told him DC and Virginia are suing to stop his arch. They sue him on everything, he said, and “They’ve lost every lawsuit.” Then the pitch: the most beautiful arch ever, in his telling, and “more beautiful than the Arc de Triomphe.” And the size? “Slightly larger, not a lot larger, but slightly larger.” The arch would rise about 250 feet. The one in Paris is about 164 feet, both per Time. By our math that’s 86 feet taller, or roughly half again as tall. Slightly.

Also, it’s “very important militarily, maybe more importantly, but I don’t think so.” His history lesson: it was planned “like 150 years ago” but “interfered with by a little thing called the Civil War.” By our math, 150 years ago is 1876, eleven years after the Civil War ended.

As for “lost every lawsuit”: there are now three suits against the arch, and Judge Tanya Chutkan hadn’t ruled on stopping it as of Saturday, CBS and AP report. The administration says construction could start as early as next week.