The Daily Signal - How Trump Can Make America Beautiful Again

Episode Date: December 22, 2024

On today’s edition of “The Daily Signal Podcast,” we share a conversation from The Daily Signal’s “Signal Sitdown.”   Justin Shubow, president of the National Civic Art Society, joins Bradley Devlin to discuss President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to undertake efforts to get rid of ugly public buildings and beautify American cities.   Enjoy the show! Keep Up With The Daily Signal Sign up for our email newsletters: https://www.dailysignal.com/email     Subscribe to our other shows:  The Tony Kinnett Cast: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-tony-kinnett-cast  Problematic Women: https://www.dailysignal.com/problematic-women  The Signal Sitdown: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-signal-sitdown    Follow The Daily Signal:  X: https://x.com/DailySignal  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/  Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DailySignal  Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TheDailySignal    Thanks for making The Daily Signal Podcast your trusted source for the day’s top news. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets. And we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us. And contact Desjardin today.

We'd love to talk, business. From the stories of everyday Americans to detailed policy conversations, we are going beyond the headlines to discuss the issues and events that have and are shaping this country. Welcome to the Daily Signal podcast weekend edition. I'm Virginia Allen. And today I'm so pleased that we are sharing a conversation from one of the Daily Signal's other shows, The Signal Sit Down with Bradley Devlin. And today we're bringing you the interview of Bradley sitting down from his show with the president of the National Civil Civil Civil Civil. Art Society, Justin Sabo, as they discuss how Trump can make America beautiful again. I hope you enjoyed their conversation.

Stay tuned right after this. Your government is out of control. It's doing things it has no business doing. It spends way too much money. It gets involved in way too many wars. It not only tells you what you can and can't say. It actively censors you. And the things your government should do, it can't or worse won't do it all.

It can't keep your streets clean of crime and filth. It can't keep your neighborhoods safe enough for kids to play outside. It can't even prevent your country from being invaded by millions of illegal immigrants. Why is that? Because your leaders no longer represent you. They represent themselves and their friends. In my new show, The Signal Sit Down, will expose how the sausage really gets made in Washington, D.C.,

with guests who have experience on the inside. Fingers will be pointed, names will be named. You ready? Justin Shubo, welcome to the Signal Sit Down. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, and thank you. I am so excited. I was really excited when we connected on X because I thought that this was such a cool interview opportunity because we talked so much about inflation and immigration and the foreign wars and foreign policy that we kind of forget that there are

legitimate functions of government that have been ill-attended to. And I can't think of a better example of this than architecture and public art over the past not only just 20 years when we talk about immigration and foreign wars, but really since the 1950s. No longer do we build beautiful buildings in this great imperial city of ours. And I wanted to bring you in here to talk about the importance of good architecture, the civic pride that it inspires. And, And to really ask you, you know, how to make America beautiful again. So I thank you for your time. Right now, you are the president of the National Civic Art Society.

Johnny Berkha wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recently, Johnny Burkka, the head of ISI, talking about the importance of beautiful architecture. And he said that you should be one of the names floated around to be in charge of the National Endowment of the Arts. Is that correct? Is that what he said in the op-ed? Am I getting that incorrect? Yes. I mean, Johnny said some. Johnny said some of any very nice things about me. But I've heard, I've heard, I just want to make sure that because there's so many different national endowments for this and that. I want to make sure that I had my T's crossed and

my eyes dotted. And I've heard from other folks that you would be a natural fit for the type of agenda that President Trump set at the beginning of his run, talking about how to make America beautiful again. And so all that as introduction, you became the president of the National Civic Art Society. How did you get interested in architecture and public art? And how did you end up where you are now? Well, first, I should note that I'm not an architect or artist. I'm just a layman with strong opinions.

My interest really goes back to my time in graduate school. I was studying in a philosophy PhD program. I was in it for the women and the money. And during that time period, I started reading some philosophers who talked about the importance of architecture on civilization, that architecture is a mirror in which a culture views itself. Among the philosophers I read who really influenced me were Roger Scruton, who as you may know, It was one of the great conservative philosophers of the 20th century. And I'd always been sensitive to in my environment. I even remember as a kid being really offended by a brutalist public library near where I live.

But later, you know, I started to see the, you know, how architecture shapes our consciousness. It shapes how we feel, how we think. Architecture is forced upon us. in a way that say a novel is not or a painting is not. And so therefore, it is the most political of the arts, a small piece political. But then when you get to our public buildings, you know, buildings built by the government with taxpayer dollars,

these buildings are highly valued. I mean, they express who we are, who we wish to be. And great statesmen throughout history have understood the importance of architecture for the body politic. And the same goes for our monuments and memorials. Also, you know, you can go back to the ancient world. The importance of statuary and similar kinds of art also help, you know, build a society,

its shape its values. They influence our historic memory, crystallize our national identity. And when I joined the board of the National Civic Art Society, over 10 years ago, I was able to get involved in a fight regarding public architecture in Washington, D.C. And then I just got deeper and deeper and deeper in learning about these subjects. What was that fight? So it regarded the... Because you don't think that like...

Sorry, I am also a layman with strong opinions on architecture, but I don't know much about the back-end conversation that happens, right? when we're talking about architecture in D.C. most of the time, that's going through Congress or whatever the political process may be to get it built. I just see it built and I'm I'm viscerally opposed to whatever that political process was that created that ugly blight of a building in beautiful Washington, D.C. Right. Well, I mean, I know on this podcast you're interested in talking how the sausages get made. And I've really seen what goes into those sausages while, you know, working in in this sphere. I mean, the controversy that I'm regarding, that I'm talking about regarded the National Eisenhower Memorial. The famous architect or stark architect Frank Gehry

had been chosen through what essentially appeared to be a rigged competition with only 44 entrance to design the memorial. And my organization really drew national attention to just how bad that a design was. Originally, the sole depiction of President Eisenhower was going to be of him as a life-sized barefoot boy seated on a plank, some kind of political hocom, you know, Tom Sawyer image. And we exposed that and also talked about how the memorial was totally, you know, disjointed in scope and scale. the main feature is this so-called steel tapestry that is so big that it's bigger than the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. And we were able to hold up congressional funding for the memorial for four years.

The design was greatly improved. Two sections of it were removed, each of them bigger than a basketball court. So it's already so big that you can remove two basketball court size. sections, but ultimately in the end, the Eisenhower family, which had been strongly opposed to the design, well, I think they essentially cave to pressure, political pressure, and as a result, there was sort of a backroom deal and a finalized design was made that was a compromise that nobody really liked, and the memorial did end up getting built at a cost of $180 million, nearly all of it. taxpayer dollars when originally the memorial was supposed to be privately funded the vast

majority of it. So is there a lot of waste that happens in these various squabbles over what our public landscape should look like? I mean, that seems like a very expensive memorial for what we got out of it. I see these like, I don't know if you've seen this on Twitter. I've seen specifically outside of sports arenas, like crappy bronze statues being put up that no likeness to the player whatsoever. I think Christiana Rinaldo's bronze bust was a famous example of this as well. These the actual product, the art isn't worth what we're spending on it.

So why is it so expensive? Well, I mean, I'm glad you mentioned those sports statues. Another terrible one is Dwayne Wade. I don't know if you've seen that one. Yes, the Dwayne Wade one. That's exactly what I'm thinking of. And, you know, there's a big difference between just any old figurative art and good art. And there are some incredibly talented artists out there, but we need the patrons of art to recognize who those people are. And, you know, this is significant because President Trump has announced that he's going to be building a Garden of American Heroes.

This is something he had announced in his first term. It was an executive order, but Biden canceled it. but Trump has said he's going to do it. And I think it's highly important that that garden be done well. And in fact, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts is supposed to play a role in that garden. And I think it's therefore important that that person understand where the talent is in this country. I mean, as an example of what can be done in a positive way, I would point to you. to the new art in the National World War I Memorial in D.C. just opened, I think it was in September.

It's this incredible bronze relief, about 60 feet long and eight feet high, called A Soldier's Journey. It's beautiful. It's moving. It's dramatic. And it's heroic. Since the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, there's been a general trend not to include heroism in our monuments and memorials. And maybe that was right for Vietnam, but I don't think it's right for something like World War I. And the sculptor, Saban Howard, is a classically trained artist who also did not want to portray everyone in the memorial as just a victim. And in fact, in his speech at the opening of the memorial, he said there are no victims here. Now, that's not to say that the memorial doesn't include loss and tragedy. I mean, there are dead and wounded soldiers in it and one who looks like he's shell-shocked.

But at the same time, the memorial is cinematic. It starts on the left with the soldier leaving home saying goodbye to his wife and daughter, then marching with his comrades and arms to the front. Next, you see the soldier leading troops into combat. It's the crucible of battle. They're shouting. They have bayonets on their rifles. I mean, I think the central person in the memorial is, you know, holding a handgun.

And how often do you see handguns in monuments memorials? And so then, yes, then they're in the crucible of battle. And you see a sort of twisted cross, which I think is supposed to represent something about a civilization self-destructing in Europe. And then you see the tragedy and the loss. But then you see the wounded walking arm and arm. And then that is followed by an actual victory parade with men carrying the American flag. And then the soldier returns home to his wife and daughter.

So it's a very powerful piece. One of the most important things about it is that it is that it is, legible to the ordinary person, this is not some kind of abstract art that's a inkblot open up to open to the viewers interpretation. It is making a very clear statement and you do not need a tour guide. You don't need an audio guide to understand what you're looking at. And I think that demonstrates the power of well done traditional art in a way that a lot of modernist art cannot achieve. You mentioned it's going to be so important as we try to make America beautiful again. It's so important for these policymakers and these decision makers to know where the talent is.

I think a lot of conservatives look at the current landscape in the arts. They see modern art, and they're appalled by it, and they see modern architecture, and they're appalled by it. And all of this is agrift by these postmodern architects and artists to, rake in the dough, and it seems like raking the dough while putting in very minimal effort. Like they're like, oh, no, actually, if you look at my inkblot, what I'm saying is I spent so much time torturing myself over this. I was like, Descartes. I was locked in a room of my own imagination, and this is all that I could express on the paper without becoming overwhelmed. Right? There's like always some twisted, contorted reason why there art looks like a Rorschach

test. you know, with this financial grift, how can we re-ignite, re-engage the talent that you say still exists? Because, I mean, I think for a lot of conservatives, they doubt that that talent even exists at all. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, art and architecture on the whole is in a very bad state right now, not just in America, but in Western civilization. So there is a real challenge when we are, you know, building, public buildings and public art. But as the World War I Memorial demonstrates, you can find the talent. They had an open competition blindly reviewed. And I mean, I'll admit, I encourage the winning sculptor to enter the competition. And my organization also had a hand

in drafting the competition brief, the requirements, which included that the memorial show heroism and valor. But if we have the right leaders out there, people with judgment and and taste, we can find the talent. You know, when it comes to architecture, federal architecture, I would point to the new Tuscaloosa federal building in Alabama, which is a magnificent Greek revival design, you know, with a pediment and columns. It's a courthouse that actually looks like a courthouse and not some kind of art project. And the sculptor, I mean, the architects there show or have demonstrated,

that we can still build beautiful buildings that inspire the public. Yeah, I remember some field trip or school thing going down to, I grew up in Southern California, we went down to the local courthouse 20 minutes or so away. And I got there. It was all grayish brown cement, weird angles. Every window was tinted. It looked like a prison, right? The jail is close by.

Those two products, the jail and the courthouse, looked like they were part of the same piece, that they were part of the same larger architectural product or project, I should say. And for me, I'm sitting here thinking, why are we casting our justice system in a light that suggests justice is not being done here that actually the criminal, the imposition of a criminal justice system, the imposition of the United States on its population is inherently unjust, right? It's almost like everyone who encounters the courthouse ought to just go straight to jail, right?

go, go straight to jail, that there's nothing beautiful being done here. There's nothing uplifting. There's nothing that heals society being done here. And it's all conveyed through this really ugly architecture that makes the courthouse look just like the jail. A lot of this, I think conservatives with the context of there's, you know, that they believe that there's no good art. There's no good architects left in the country. They say, well, let's just defund everything. Let's just get rid of everything.

Let's just scrap it. Why should conservatives reconsider that position? If a conservative walks up to you and says, Justin, I know, you do really cool work. Really, really like the new World War I Memorial, but I still think we should get rid of the federal government's role in any of this art nonsense. What do you reply to that conservative?

Well, first I would say, it's inevitable that we need new courthouses. You know, there's, you know, often, you know, the buildings are running out of space. And new buildings are always going to be coming down the pike. I mean, it is an interesting question in Washington about how many federal workers go to the office, whether or not some of those buildings are essentially getting emptied and they could be consolidated in some of the ugly mid-century buildings, which are aging, really. badly could come down and we could, you know, redevelop those sites with mixed use or museums

or something like that. So it's just inevitable that we're always going to have these public buildings. And as for public art, there are always more memorials coming down the pike. All you need is an interest group who is able to influence Congress and boom, they're congressionally authorized. and the question is whether the memorial or monument is going to be publicly funded or not. It's very often the case that they're required to be privately funded. That's what happened, for instance, with the World War II Memorial. I think it was 100% private funds. Unfortunately, what can happen, though, is supposing the private money is not coming in.

If you have influential members of Congress, then they'll just say, well, you know, okay, we're going to appropriate millions and millions of dollars. for the work. But, you know, if our architecture and public art is done right, I think it's absolutely a good use of taxpayer dollars. I mean, you know, you were talking about justice and courthouse design. If people go to a courthouse and feel like it's a place where they're going to get justice, they're going to be better behaved. They're going to have greater trust in the legal system. I mean, there is a contemporary architect who talks about, you know, while we live in a society with a postmodern conception of justice, that's why we need to have postmodern architecture. But in so many ways, the judicial system... I'm sorry to interrupt, but how do these architects come

to think something like that? I mean, where did this go so wrong where prominent architects have the gall to say things like that? Well, if you go back to the bird, of modernist architecture after World War I in Europe, those architects were trying to achieve a revolution in the social order. They did think that their society had self-destructed, and they were drawn to extreme ideologies on the left, whether it's communism or socialism and on the right, fascism and even Nazism. So these were not, you know, defenders of liberal democracy. They had this radical ideology. And, you know, although architects have not necessarily always had that kind of extremist viewpoint, many of them by and large have rejected the idea

of continuity with the past. They see themselves as a kind of vanguard for the future, trying to create a new society. They'll say, you know, we don't wear borrowed clothes anymore. You know, we don't wear togas, therefore, why should we possibly, you know, design in a classical style? And you'll find some architects openly sort of expressing, you know, a view of government. So Frank Gary, the architect of the Eisenhower Memorial, talked about how democracy is a clash of ideas. And so, therefore, the design of our building should clash with each other. And, you know, maybe the former is true, but the latter certainly does not follow. You'll also find modernist architects who are essentially openly nihilistic in their worldview.

There is an architect named Rem Kulhas, who is Dutch, who happened to design the headquarters for the communist TV station in China. I mean, he talked about how using child labor was complex fun. pornography is the last form of humanism. He's critiqued buildings for giving a false sense of existential security. You'll find architects like him also saying that beauty does not matter. So they have a completely different worldview from that of the ordinary person. And as another instance of this regards the architect of the San Francisco go federal building, which is relatively new. It looks like some kind of alien spacecraft that's about to shoot laser beams.

And it's been called, you know, sinister, terrifying. Well, the architect of that building is a guy named Tom Main. He said regarding the September 11 attacks, I'm completely out of touch. I could just as easily make the case for the terrorists as the other way around. Now, mind you, the New York Times called this guy, the federal government's favorite architect. because he's done some other buildings. And he even said to a small audience that he put symbolic guillotine over the judge's benches. So here we have a genuinely subversive architect who has talked about how he is inspired by

Che Guevara, among others. You know, here we have someone getting paid millions of dollars to build important government buildings. Yeah. And before I so rudely interrupted you, you were kind of laying out a very eloquent defense of why, you know, if conservatives refuse to fight in this space, if they just completely scrap everything, well, then chances are you're just going to have a lot of Democrats or a lot of uniparty figures just pushing, you know, privately funded slash, you know, publicly wink

and nod at, you know, a big George Floyd Memorial in Washington, D.C., or whatever it may be. You were talking about the need for conservatives to fight on this landscape because public buildings are inevitable. You know, speaking of conservatives, Winston Churchill gave a speech on the rebuilding of the House of Commons after it had been bombed in World War II. And he famously said, we shape our buildings thereafter they shape us. He was a statesman, and he understood the role of architecture

for the body politic. And you can go all the way back to Pericles and ancient Athens building the Parthenon on the Acropolis to demonstrate the supremacy of the city state. To this day, you can look at the ruins of that building and get a sense of Athens greatness. So it's no small matter for a government to support art and architecture that redounds to the greatness of the country. This is something that Theodore Roosevelt talked about, who was actually quite interested in art and architecture. He said a national greatness that does not include art and artistic and architectural greatness is only a malformed greatness. Yeah.

And it goes back even further than Roosevelt. It goes all the way back to the founding era. You've, I believe, talked about this in other places, but George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, working with LaFont to build Washington, D.C. I mean, they were very involved and they understood the importance of what did the capital building look like. What does our White House look like? Speak to the importance of the founders because I think a misconception for conservatives is in the founding era, you know, the constitution enumerate certain powers given to the legislature. It provides broader powers, more executive powers, obviously, to the executive branch, right? It has the executive power and then the executive duties that stem from it.

And I think that there was no, you know, government intervention into art and architecture. They think they don't think that there was any, you know, government intervention into the media, whereas, like, one of the earliest subsidies the federal government passed back in the late 18th century was a subsidy on the post because they thought that the media environment in the early republic was necessary to foster civic dialogue and to promote the common good of the whole of society because it was inviting the demos media consumers into a conversation with some of their political leaders who were writing whether it was with their with their name or pseudonymously under a pseudonym for these very

publications. And I kind of see that playing out with architecture here as well. The founders always knew that the built environment of the United States of America was going to be crucial for the republic's flourishing. Absolutely. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were talented architects. I mean, amateurs, but in Jefferson's case, he was an actual genius. He designed the Virginia Capitol, which is the first public building built as a strict temple on Roman aesthetics. And it was a kind of cultural independence from British colonial architecture. Later, you know, he designed the University of Virginia, which has a building based on the Pantheon in Rome.

And both Washington and Jefferson, when designing Washington and the core buildings of government, wish to harken back to Democratic Athens and Republican Rome. That's why they consciously chose classical architecture. I mean, they were involved in the competitions for the White House and Capitol and even influenced the designs themselves. Jefferson wanted to use architecture to impress the rest of the world and talked about using a style of architecture that has had the approbation of thousands. of years. And the founders inaugurated a tradition that it lasted essentially for 150 years

until the end of World War II. I mean, I think it's fair to say that when Americans think of the architecture of democracy, they think of classical architecture. It is the architecture of civic virtue. I mean, that's something that we haven't talked about enough, is, you know, great architecture can inspire people to be better people, to be patriots. to be better citizens. And if done wrong, it can be subversive and be demoralizing. And so this is another reason why conservatives and indeed all Americans need to care about design. Yeah, it's so much there.

And I can't help but notice that the United States has so many beautiful different types of architecture that really define its regional differences. And yet, when you go to that, you know, for those small towns that are left, when you go to Main Street and you see the courthouse or you see City Hall or you see some of these other buildings, if they, you know, were built prior to 1950s or prior to World War I or whatever, you know, anyway, before this scourge of modern architecture, you see that, oh, I understand now this courthouse in, let's say, after. Athens, Georgia doesn't look all too dissimilar from that courthouse I saw in Connecticut, right? And so that Greek, Roman aesthetic in two very different architectural landscapes really create a tie between those two places. And that tie is not, is, you know, the architecture is symbolizing a tie that is one people, a union that's always pushing towards more perfection. What do you make of these different regional architectural styles and how might those styles be incorporated into our public design? Well, I want to get to your question in one sec, but I do want to point out regarding courthouse design that there are a couple of fundamentally American building types, one of them being the state house, the majority.

of state houses are based on the U.S. Capitol with the dome. There is the schoolhouse, the church house, and the courthouse. When you mention those buildings to Americans, they immediately have something in mind. Definitely. And that's why it's why it can make sense to have classical architecture dispersed around the country. At the same time, yes, there is wonderful historic architecture, whether it's Romanesque. Gothic, Spanish colonial, Pueblo revival. I would never say that we need to have the same kind of architecture all over the country. But there are all these wonderful great traditions, but most of them came to an end with the

rise of modernism. One thing we haven't talked about yet is that at the end of his first term, President Trump issued an executive order that revolution. federal architecture. He reoriented it from modernism. I mean, the vast majority of buildings under the current design program have been modernist, something like 90%. He reoriented toward classical and traditional architecture, bemoaning the ugliness, the dismal nature of our federal design. And the order said there should be special regard for classical and traditional architecture. Classical was defined very broadly.

So to include everything of neoclassical like that of the Capitol building all the way to Art Deco, which is the last of the classical styles, a style that combines tradition, but also that of modernity and high technology, just demonstrating how classical architecture can encompass many different things. And traditional architecture was likewise very broadly. defined. The order was at its strictest regarding Washington, D.C., requiring that all new federal buildings there be classical. But that makes sense since the founders intended Washington to be a classical city. In 1901, there was something called the McMillan plan that created the National Mall and Monumental Corps, as we know it, and that was a fundamentally classical plan. And when Americans think of Washington, D.C., they do think of a classical city. Now, of course, there are A lot of hideous government buildings in town on all these brutalist structures, especially in the Southwest quadrant, things like the HUD building, which three different HUD secretaries have said is like 10 floors of basement.

One of them said it looked like something from the Soviet Union. And then you also have the FBI building, which I like to call the Ministry of Fear. It's a sinister building, you know, I mean, you might say, well, for people who are very critical. critical of the FBI, maybe. It should look like that it's surveilling you in a villainous way. But, you know, the FBI building is coming down because it's in such a bad state that the government realized that it's less expensive to tear down this massive, brutalist building and build a new FBI building, whether it's going to be there or in the suburb is a different story. But these mid-century buildings are aging really, really badly.

The Forestall building, which is this massive building just south of the mall across the street from the Smithsonian Castle, that building, for instance, needs $500 million in must-do repairs. That's not even talking about modernizing the building, bringing it up to Class A office space, which would probably cost a billion dollars. So there's a strong argument to be made that, you know, these ugly buildings should be, should come down and be replaced by buildings that Americans and visitors to Washington actually like. You made such an important point before jumping into that really great explainer on Trump's executive order. And it's all these different regional styles of architecture that we love as Americans that remind us of my hometown in southern. Southern California, or the Great Pacific Northwest, or Texas and the South, or Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the Northeast, they are all under threat. They are all at risk of being leveled by this postmodern wave of architecture and art.

I think that's such an important point to make. But this Trump executive order, I read it before our interview because I know that you were involved in this. I know that your organization was involved in this. And when I read, I mean, it reads like a history of the government's role in public architecture since the founding era. Talking about, you know, in the 1950s, it basically came, became unspoken policy that all the federal buildings were just going to be ugly and drab.

And then that kind of becomes official in the 60s where they just completely through classical and traditional architecture into what they thought was the dustbin of history saying, you know, we don't need that anymore. We want to have all of these hypermodern alien spaceships Ministry of Fear Buildings put up all around us. I had no idea that that was the case. I mean, I'm trying to even get into the mind

of a policymaker who would say, this is a good idea, because it just sounds so outlandish to me. And yet this has been the stated policy of the United States going on, 60 years? Yes. In 1962, there were these so-called guiding principles for federal architecture. It was one page in a government report on office space. The page was written by a young Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who would later become U.S. Senator from New York. But at the time, he was a big fan of modernist architecture. And the principles state that there should be no official style, which was code for

saying no more classicism. At the same time, modernism did become de facto official. I mean, essentially no classical or traditional buildings were built at least until the 1990s. But another key part of those principles is they state that design shall flow from the architectural profession to the government and not vice versa. In other words, the government abdicated authority to private architects, and the vast majority of architects at that time, like today, are modernists. It's as if the government was asking Boeing, well, you tell us what airplanes we should be building. And President Trump wisely saw that this system was completely flawed and undid it with a stroke of a pen. Unfortunately, President Biden, almost immediately after taking office, rescinded Trump's order.

Why would he do that? Well, the architectural establishment was hysterically opposed to the executive order. You know, they were saying that this is the architecture of fear, the architecture of white supremacy, all sorts of outrageous arguments that I think held no purchase with the order. ordinary public. But the establishment, including the American Institute of Architects, which is the main trade organization, were lobbying very hard for Biden to undo the order. And they were successful. I mean, there's a lot of money at stake here.

So you can imagine some mega firms who are big members of the AIA, they don't want to lose their giant government contracts. But really, there's also an establishment. aesthetic ideology at play here. And it's a sad story, but, you know, in 2020, my organization did a survey by the Harris poll of Americans' preferences in federal architecture. And it found that 72% of the people surveyed preferred classical and traditional design. Now, I think these results were not surprising.

And architects, even modernist architects, if they're being honest, know that that's true, but there is an architectural elite that is disdainful of the public's preferences. There's a kind of arrogance there where they're saying, well, we're going to design what we think is good architecture, and you just have to suck it up. And by the way, there were widespread majorities for tradition across all demographic groups, gender, race, socioeconomic, and even political party affiliation with 73% of Republicans preferring tradition and 70% of Democrats. By contrast, you know, when the executive order was leaked and there was this firestorm of outrage, the New York Times published an editorial titled What's So Great About Fake Roman Temples,

arguing that, you know, we should not build in traditional styles anymore. What was their alternative? I mean, Soviet architecture? Well, you know, I think their alternative is this kind of, you know, globalized postmodern, modernist style that we have been seeing in recent years. It's real kind of a motley assortment of different kinds of art projects, none of them having to do with the great tradition of American classical architecture. Yeah, and it's, it was so much fun at the very beginning of Trump's run. this go around in 2024, he came out. I think it was like a slide that had four different points.

It was like, make America wealthy again, make America safe again, make American families big again, and make America beautiful again. And the bullet points under Make America Beautiful Again, which like, you know, the world is full of problems, but these were the four things that Trump identified early on. And the bullet point underneath, Make America Beautiful again was let's get back to traditional and classical architecture. We talked a little bit about the executive order that Biden rescinded from Trump. Obviously, Trump could put that back into place.

But what are other areas of opportunity for the Trump administration over these next four years to accomplish what you and I have been talking about, restoring civic pride through our public works in architecture? Sure. So, you know, besides looking at federal buildings, I think there is a real opportunity regarding infrastructure. It was very interesting when the White House announced the appointment of Sean Duffy as Secretary of Transportation. It said that, you know, he will ensure that there is excellence and quality and so on in our infrastructure,

but it also singled out the term beauty or included the term beauty. So now here we are talking about building beautiful airports, building beautiful train stations, and a real opportunity regards Penn Station in New York City. If you've ever been there, it's one of the worst, most dismal, darkest, gloomy places in America. It's a giant train station, the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere, with 600,000 people going through it a day. And yet it's subterranean, there's no light, it's dark, it's dangerous, and Madison Square Garden squats on top of it.

There is a real need for a new Penn Station. The original design was actually this gorgeous classical building inspired by the ancient Roman baths of Caracalla. The building was so great that Langston Hughes wrote a poem about it, calling it a bulwark for the soul, comparing it to a cathedral. And there is this famous line that was written after that building was destroyed in the 1960s. It had been constructed in 1910. The great architectural critic Vincent Scully said, one used to enter the city like a god.

Now you scuttle in like a rat. And President Trump, whoa. He's got the chills. Yeah. President Trump almost immediately after the election had a cordial call with New York's governor, or Kathy Hockel. And he said he wanted to make Penn Station beautiful again. So here we have someone who already understands the power, the greatness, the beauty of

classical architecture, potentially wanting to get involved in this building. And, you know, yes, it's just a train station, but a public building like that is of incredible symbolic significance. I mean, Notre Dame was just restored and look at the grand opening of that. and the impact that has on civilization while doing something magnificent in New York, I think, could have a similar impact. And there is a plan out there to build a new classical Penn Station. And I'm hoping that President Trump can get it done or get a new station done when no one else can do it.

I mean, there is terrible gridlock in New York City, the governor, the mayor, the MTA, and the New Jersey Transit. Nothing good is going to happen right now unless President Trump gets involved. And, you know, I could see him doing an Operation Warp Speed for Penn Station in the same way that he was able to build Woman Rink in New York's Central Park, get it done in a couple months when no one had been able to do it for years. Yeah, this is kind of his bread and butter, right? Architects, architecture, beauty. And I can't help but smile at this because, you know, you. You know, he's on Joe Rogan's podcast before the election, of course, and he said, you know, Joe, I made my, I made my millions on luxury. It's like luxury and beauty.

And I really don't think that we'd be having this conversation if any other Republican figure would have been dominating our politics for the last decade. It seems like Trump himself, the virtues that he brings to public office is like what's really propelled this conversation and moved the ball forward. Oh, absolutely. I mean, Trump has put architecture on the political radar screen. But, you know, now it's spread beyond them. In the Congress that's about to end, there was actually legislation that would essentially codify. his executive order. The lead sponsor in the Senate is Marco Rubio and in the House is Jim Banks, who is about to become the senator from Indiana. And it's gone even beyond that. And I should say

that J.D. Vance was one of the co-sponsors of that bill. And Vance in 2022 tweeted that we used to build beautiful public buildings. And we should do so again. So here we also had the vice president of the United States caring about the issue. But it's spread even beyond the legislation. The 2024 GOP platform specifically said that Republicans will promote beauty in public buildings and build cherished symbols of the nation. So this has gone very wide and President Trump should take all the credit for it. And there's Penn Station.

And I've been beating this drum since it was announced, I want my statue garden. I want my big national, I want the statues to be ridiculously sized and beautiful. Tell me a little bit about that. When am I going to get my statue garden? I know that there's a lot up in the air still, but I mean, I feel like this is such an important project given the iconoclasm that really racked the country in the four years that Trump wasn't in office. Yeah. I'm not sure how fast it will happen. I think the first time around what they were trying to do at the start was to see.

if there were any statues that could be moved to the garden. And I think it's unclear where the garden will be, but I've heard that one possible site would be near Mount Rushmore. So it's a place, you know, a pilgrimage site that Americans are already going to. But, I mean, I've never been out there, but what do you do once you've been there at Mount Rushmore? Yeah. And maybe that would be an ideal place for the garden.

So one place to start would be to start by using existing beautiful, sculptures. But then, yes, we need to, you know, find the talented artists out there and, you know, have them build some, some wonderful designs. And, you know, there is something else that we need to talk about, which is the semi-quincentennial, or as America, it's easier to say America 250. I've had to practice many times to remember that. But, you know, that's going to happen in In 2026, you know, the anniversary, 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. And this is an incredible opportunity to commemorate the greatness of our past going all the way back to the founders.

And we can do so through some great, great public art. Justin Shubo, thank you for joining me on the Signal Sitdown. Thanks for having me. We're going to leave it there for today. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button. for both the Daily Signal Podcast and The Signal Sit Down. We are going to have an edition of Top News tomorrow Monday. That will be our last Top News for 2024.

So make sure you catch that show. And hey, if you have a minute, if you would, take a minute to leave the Daily Signal Podcast or Signal Sit Down, a five-star rating and review. We really love hearing your feedback. Have a wonderful week. Merry Christmas. And we'll see you right back here tomorrow for Top News and Ted.

The Daily Signal podcast is made possible because of listeners like you. Executive producers are Rob Lewy and Katrina Trinko. Hosts are Virginia Allen, Brian Gottstein, Tyler O'Neill, and Elizabeth Mitchell. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, John Pop, and Joseph von Spakovsky. To learn more or support our work, please visit DailySignal.com.