Days before the 2024 election, mysterious satirical statues of Donald Trump appeared in several U.S. cities with a plaque captioned “In Honor of a Lifetime of Sexual Assault.”
According to NPR, in late October, the statues showed up in Philadelphia, D.C., and Portland, OR, and underneath the “Lifetime of Sexual Assault,” the plaque quotes Trump’s infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape leaked during the 2016 campaign. “I just start kissing them,” the president-elect said in the tape heard ’round the world. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.” As many recall, the vulgar and offensive quote goes on from there.
A tiki torch hand and Nancy Pelosi’s poop-covered desk
Meanwhile, in D.C., two other Trump-inspired statues briefly appeared. One of the D.C. statues was Nancy Pelosi’s desk covered in human poop, with a plaque stating it honored the “brave men and women who broke into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, to loot, urinate and defecate throughout those hallowed halls,” to overturn the election Biden won.
The other D.C. sculpture was of a human hand holding a tiki torch, referencing the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Virginia. That statue’s plaque said it was dedicated to Trump, who said there were “very fine people” in Charlottesville demonstrating against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in that city, leaving one woman dead and dozens injured.
The tiki torch statue plaque added, “while many have called them white supremacists and neo-Nazis, President Trump’s voice rang out above the rest to remind all that they were ‘treated unfairly.’ This monument stands as an everlasting reminder of that bold proclamation.”
The statues were short-lived
All the Trump statues were taken down in the cities where they appeared not long after they were noticed. In Portland, the statue was beheaded and vandalized, and a pro-Trump Portland city councilor tried to chisel away at the “sexual assault” plaque before the statue finally disappeared.
In D.C., someone involved successfully applied for a permit. According to New York Magazine, the permit was traced to the producer of a Borat sequel. While she was not involved in the statues, she did agree to apply for the permit to help the artist or artists remain anonymous.
It’s unclear who the artist or artists are behind the guerrilla statue installations, but speaking with CNN before the election, someone who claimed to be responsible for them said “the most shocking things about Trump, as a president and as a candidate, as a person, are so ingrained in our memory, are so distant that they aren’t shocking anymore. We put these up because we want to remind people that these are important things, and they should inform a decision-making process.”
Speaking with New York Magazine, the anonymous artist or artists added, “we’ve been through nine years of a Trump presidency and the aftermath and now a campaign again. It’s exhausting, and we’ve grown kind of numb to it … So this is a way to try to bring some of those very shocking, very real, very important things into a national conversation in a fun, cheeky way.”
Though one appeared in Philadelphia, it’s unknown if the people behind the stunt are based in Pennsylvania. But if they are, in light of the election results, we’re sorta feeling this X comment.
Now that Trump won, it’s unclear if more statues are coming between now and 2028, which can’t come soon enough. When asked if more might show up before the inauguration, the artist or artists responded, “anything can happen.” We’ll keep you updated.