The Kingdom – of Saudi Arabia, that is – illuminates MAGA ambitions.

BBC online had a valuable article yesterday* about retrenchment on some of the megaprojects previously announced by the Saudi government and its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman al Saud (MbS for ease).  Predictably, it has proven easier to commission breathtaking renderings, simulations and press releases than to execute incredible (literally, as it turns out) projects that challenge the limits of environment, resources, technology and economics.  Given that the USA’s current leadership so clearly aspires to emulate MbS and other autocrats down through history, this brought to mind their own Napoleonic building endeavors.

Mr. Trump likes to describe himself as a master developer, but considered on an international, or even a national scale, the projects his multiplicity of accounting entities have actualized are hardly ambitious.  Where others might develop an entire urban neighborhood (Hudson Yards, in New York for just one example of many) combining multiple uses, extensive civic infrastructure and multi-tiered approval processes open to public scrutiny, Trump branded properties seem to consist of single-tower condominiums (for the reliably lucrative luxury market), golf clubs (ditto) or hotels (ditto – and neither particularly large nor grand for today’s hospitality industry). Not to mention refurbishment and rebranding of existing properties or application of TRUMP identifiers to properties developed and/or managed by others.  Innovative solutions to thorny challenges; years of diligent project development and phased execution; navigating a complex mix of users, stakeholders, overseers and sophisticated lenders to meet the requirements of customers not predisposed to dispose of excess wealth?  Not so much.

All of which makes one wonder just how well thought out the current White House Ballroom project really is.  Aside from ballooning cost – $200 million at announcement, to $400 million supposedly raised at no taxpayer expense to now $1 billion discussed in a request for funding out of public pockets by his Republican congress – has his ever-changing design team really worked out the structural issues of spanning such a large space in a traditional architectural style and roof height clearly suited to short spans?  How about the issues of HVAC and acoustics for such a large space – with no evidence of supply pathways and registers, rooftop equipment/penthouse, cooling towers, boiler plant, exhaust and intake airways?  For that matter, is there adequate site space for parking, queuing, shipping and receiving to serve such a space, or trash and recycling for a top-quality food service operation of the magnitude described?  Site design, multi-discipline engineering and value engineering on a project such as this normally consumes months of work after selecting and assembling a large and well-coordinated team and nearly always requires adjustments to early visual design concepts.  Doing all that while earthwork and foundations are already being placed is a sure path to expensive over-design or even-more-expensive change orders during the procurement, construction and commissioning process. 

The projected 250 ft tall Arch de TRiUMPh is another very large question mark, regardless of what one thinks of its visual design or true promotional intent. 

Unlike a common hotel or condo building, such a behemoth will require bespoke geotech/structural engineering to support and stabilize its mass on the sedimentary soils likely present on such a riverine site.  The stated intent to have it designed and constructed by July of next year precludes proper attention to this and many other issues, leading one to anticipate significant changes, delays, overages or failure over time (‘Pisa’ comes to mind….).

All of which brings us to the ‘Trump Class Battleships’ announced with great fanfare earlier this year. 

Foregoing questions about the applicability of ‘Battleships’ to contemporary and future warfare (a really big forego according to commentators with insight into military matters) such a state-of-tomorrow’s-art weapon requires years of study and proof-of-concept testing, development of new technologies and systems and establishment of unique production facilities and supply chains.  Nothing in Mr. Trump’s behavior (or that of those serving his whims) suggests such an in-depth effort has been thought through. To the contrary, the public talk of how soon the first ship is to be built and commissioned suggests it has not. 

‘Waste fraud and abuse,’ the mantra of Mr. Trump’s now abandoned DOGE debacle, tends to be a self-actualizing cry – the louder one claims to be attacking that triumvirate of supposed sins, the more likely it is that one‘s own efforts will actually perpetrate them. The American public should thus be prepared to learn in future that these and other such grand projects are either cancelled, scaled back or revealed as boondoggles, their flaws predictably disowned by those who proposed and sold them. 

As Saudi megaprojects are going today, so shall this administration’s MAGAprojects go tomorrow.

P. S. – E Unum Pluribus is a speculative fiction exploring one way in which the parallel political overreach of our current leadership may bring an end to the U. S. A., and what might come in its wake.  With a thrilling plot driven by politics and economics (as well as gender, class, language and even the origins of faith) the novel is currently being serialized online and anyone can read it, at no cost, by navigating to the website robinandrew.net and selecting E Unum Pluribus from the home page’s top menu, or via this link: https://robinandrew.net/2026/01/01/e-unum-pluribus/

*‘How Saudi Arabia’s spending spree reached the end of the line,’ Sebastian Usher, BBC Global affairs correspondent, BBC online, 2026-05-24.