Two satirical statues of Donald Trump appeared in Portland, Oregon, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, over the past week, though the former was promptly beheaded.
Both works feature a human-sized golden model of the Republican presidential nominee along with a plaque titled “In Honor of a Lifetime of Sexual Assault” at the base. The plaque also included comments from Trump’s Access Hollywood tape, which was published in October 2016, in which he had a graphic conversation about women with host Billy Bush.
With less than a week to go until the 2024 presidential election, polls indicate the gap between Trump and Democratic candidate Kamala Harris remains razor-thin. An analysis of recent polling by election website FiveThirtyEight published on October 30 put Harris ahead by 1.4 points, with the vice president on 48.1 percent of the vote against Trump’s 46.7 percent. However, it gave Trump a 52 percent chance of winning overall, versus 48 percent for Harris, due to the Electoral College system.
The first statue emerged on Sunday in Portland on Southwest 6th Avenue, next to an existing abstract nude bronze female sculpture, which was installed in 1975.
Quoting remarks Trump made to Access Hollywood in 2005, which leaked ahead of the 2016 election, its plaque read: “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p****. You can do anything.”
According to local network KOIN, this Trump statue lasted less than a day before being beheaded, and Portland City Council candidate and “fearless Trump supporter” Brandon Farley later recorded himself chipping away at the statue’s plaque.
A second statue of Trump, featuring an identical plaque, appeared in Philadelphia’s Maja Park on Wednesday, also close to a preexisting bronze sculpture of a naked woman. According to Philly Voice, it was swiftly removed by local authorities.
Newsweek contacted Donald Trump’s presidential election campaign for comment on Thursday via email outside of regular office hours.
Chip Somodevilla/GETTY
In January 2024, Trump was instructed to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million in damages after a New York jury concluded he had sexually assaulted and subsequently defamed her in a civil case.
Trump has strongly denied assaulting Carroll in the alleged incident, which she claimed took place in a New York department store changing room in the mid-1990s.
Last week, two mysterious statues appeared in Washington D.C., one featuring a giant pile of feces on Nancy Pelosi’s desk with the caption: “This memorial honors 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 in order to overturn an election.”
The second statue was a tiki torch titled “The Donald J Trump Enduring Flame,” an apparent reference to the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” march, which featured neo-Nazis. Trump later sparked controversy for saying there were “very fine people on both sides,” though he also said there were “very bad people” at the far-right rally.
The Washington Post said it received two anonymous phone calls from the same person who claimed they were behind all four statues, though this cannot be independently verified by Newsweek.
