India, Feb. 5 -- President Donald Trump says history is on his side. He wants to build a towering arch near the Lincoln Memorial and argues that the nation's Capital first clamored for such a monument two centuries ago - even going so far as to erect four eagle statues as part of the project before being derailed by the attack on Fort Sumter.

"It was interrupted by a thing called the Civil War, and so it never got built," Trump said aboard Air Force One as he flew to Florida last weekend. "Then, they almost built something in 1902, but it never happened." Trump's history is off - the eagles he references are actually part of a bridge connecting Virginia and Washington that was built decades after the Civil War.

The closest Washington ca...