Clinton Slams Trump Over Arch, Kennedy Center

Former President Bill Clinton is criticizing President Donald Trump’s perceived need to receive credit for things he’s done.

This includes plans for a triumphal arch and the efforts to put his name on the Kennedy Center.

Clinton said global challenges would be more easily dealt with if leaders “didn’t care as much about who got the credit.”

Clinton spoke at the opening of the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York Tuesday.

Clinton mentioned some of Trump’s recent announcement of plans for a massive arch bridging Washington and Virginia would incorporate a “top grade military complex” and store drones.

“I think it’s important to take a few minutes to assess where we are now and the environment in which we are meeting,” Clinton said.

“I suppose I could take my entire allotted time to discuss the self-evident wisdom of building an Arc de Triomphe in Washington to hold all our drones,” Clinton said as the audience laughed.

“Some of this stuff — it’s hard to make up,” he continued.

“Over the course of a lifetime, there are only so many real opportunities to make decisions that we know will shape our personal history and the history of those we live with and care about for a long time to come. This is one of those moments,” he said.

He then mentioned the Kennedy Center board’s attempts to inscribe Trump’s name on the historic Washington building.

“I personally think that the way we’ve argued about what’s going on at the Kennedy Center and all that kind of stuff — I think we’ve been majoring in the minors,” Clinton said.

“You really think 100 years from now anybody’s going to care very much about whose name’s on what building?” he asked.

“Isn’t it more important what happens in the building? And what happens outside the building?” he continued.

“I feel so strongly — as I did 30 years ago-plus when I ran for president as a virtual child — that diversity is a positive thing, not a negative one.”

“That cooperation works better than conflict, and that we could actually deal with just about every challenge we face, if we didn’t care as much about who got the credit, and we made sure that we took care of the least of these,” Clinton, 80, said.