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Call it the Arc de Trump.

At a dinner to thank donors for contributing to his longtime passion project – a $250 million, 90,000 square-foot ballroom at the White House – President Donald Trump unveiled a new scheme.

Standing behind a podium in the East Room on Oct. 15, while guests sat at round tables, he picked up a 3-D model of a giant arch, reminiscent of Paris’s imposing Arc de Triomphe. He pointed to a table with a map showing its proposed location across from the Lincoln Memorial. The arch would serve as a gateway to Washington D.C. while entering through the Arlington Memorial Bridge from the Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

“That’s Arlington Memorial Bridge,” he said. “And at the end of it, you have a circle that was built 150 years ago. You have two columns on one side, two columns on the other, yet in the middle, just a circle. And everyone in the past had said something was supposed to be built there. But a thing called the Civil War interfered. That’s a good reason.”

Trump showed off 3-D models of the project, in three sizes: “small, medium and large” he said.

He did not offer any further details on the cost or who would fund it – nor what permits it might require or when it would be built.  The White House did not immediately respond to questions about the proposed arch.

Trump then went on to name presidents who had undertaken various projects in the White house: “James Monroe who added the South Portico to Andrew Jackson who added the North Portico to Theodore Roosevelt, who added the West Wing,” he said. “And Harry Truman, who added the Truman Balcony.”

Trump, whose background is in real estate, has made several changes in the White House, including replacing the Rose Garden lawn with a paved over patio and gilding the Oval Office.

“It’s so relaxing for me, real estate is relaxing,” he told his guests at the East Room. “For a lot of people, real estate is a very trying business. I’ve always liked it. I’ve always done well with it.”

At one point, Trump promised the donors that the ballroom would be done with “exquisite” taste.

“I consider myself an important designer because they come in with things that they may be good designers, but boy, the things they can recommend are horrible,” he said.

The donors at the dinner were representatives of some of America’s biggest corporations, including Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Alphabet’s Google, Meta and Amazon, a White House official told USA TODAY.

For years, Trump has been pushing for a ballroom in the White House that would accommodate large gatherings, such as state dinners. He’s lamented the fact that many of the fancy affairs in the past were held in tents.

He even pitched the idea of building a ballroom to two former presidents: Barack Obama and Joe Biden, telling them he’d build it and pay for it himself.

There were no takers.

Ultimately, when he got a chance to occupy the White House for a second time, he announced his intention to build a “beautiful” ballroom on Feb. 6, two weeks after taking office.

He said he’d pay for it himself.

But plans evolved over the months, and the White House said the $250 million project would be financed by private donors and the president.

Trump said the ballroom project had been “fully financed” and that there was even some “money left over” for his next project.

“We’ll use that probably maybe for the arc, or something else that will come,” he said.

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X @SwapnaVenugopal