A Hilarious Statue Mocking Trump's 'Dear Leader' Parade Triggers White House
The 8-foot high work features a gold thumbs-up by President Bone Spurs crushing the Statue of Liberty, amid gushy - true! - comments from world dictators
By Janna Brancolini The Daily Beast
The White House has issued a scathing response to a statue erected on the National Mall to protest President Donald Trump’s military birthday parade.
Titled “Dictator Approved,” the 8-foot-tall sculpture features a gold-painted hand giving a thumbs up while crushing the Statue of Liberty’s verdigris crown. Its base is decorated with four plaques highlighting quotes from authoritarian leaders praising Trump.
According to a permit for the installation issued by the National Park Service, the piece was meant as a rebuke to Trump’s June 14 parade celebrating the Army’s 250th anniversary—which coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday, The Washington Post reported.
The parade “feature[ed] imagery similar to autocratic, oppressive regimes” like North Korea, Russia, and China, the statue’s creators—who so far haven’t been identified—wrote in the application.
“If these Democrat activists were living in a dictatorship, their eye-sore of a sculpture wouldn’t be sitting on the National Mall right now,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, wrote to the Post an emailed statement.
“In the United States of America you have the freedom to display your so-called ‘art,’ no matter how ugly it is,” she added.
The plaques on the base quote Russian President Vladimir Putin saying, “President Trump is a very bright and talented man,” and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban saying, “The most respected, the most feared person is Donald Trump.”
A glowing quote from former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro says, “We do have a great deal of shared values. I admire President Trump.” And North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is quoted as saying the phrases, “Your excellency,” “A ‘special relationship” and, “The extraordinary courage of President Trump.”
The statue can stay up through Sunday, according to the National Parks Service permit.
The style and materials used are similar to protest artworks put up around Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, Oregon, and New York last fall.
One of those pieces depicted a pile of poop left on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)’s desk in mock “tribute” to the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed and defiled the Capitol building in an attempt to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat.
Trump’s $45 million military parade drew thin crowds and was poorly attended even by Republicans, though the president declared it a “tremendous success.”
Critics accused the president—who insisted on having tanks rolling through the streets of D.C.—of staging a Soviet-style event and using the troops as political pawns.
The event coincided with millions of Americans protesting his administration at “No Kings” rallies nationwide.
Janna Brancolini is a Rome-based journalist who writes for the Daily Beast, as well as Bloomberg, the L.A. Times and the Columbia Journalism Review. You can subscribe to the Daily Beast here.
Images: The statue with the White House beyond (MSN.com); the base of the work (AOL.com); rear view (WOTP-TV).
Thank you Jerry ! Love how powerful public art can be. So appreciate you sharing this. Always look forward to your thoughtful, well written, important articles.
“Free Speech or Free Slop? When ‘Art’ Becomes a Political Temper Tantrum”
Let’s start with the obvious: the 8-foot “Dictator Approved” statue installed on the National Mall isn’t art—it’s a tantrum cast in fiberglass. Ironically, the very act of erecting a grotesque golden thumbs-up crushing the Statue of Liberty proves the opposite of its intended message. In true authoritarian regimes, dissenting voices don’t get sculpture permits—they get disappeared. If the creators were protesting in North Korea, they wouldn’t be setting up installations; they’d be digging latrines in a labor camp.
The creators of this piece, who remain conveniently anonymous, claim Trump’s military birthday parade evokes the imagery of North Korea and Russia. But celebrating the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary with honor, ceremony, and pride is not tyranny—it’s tradition. It’s only “authoritarian” if you believe patriotism itself is oppressive.
The parade wasn’t about Donald Trump’s ego—it was about the men and women who’ve served this country for 250 years. Yet critics once again couldn’t resist using it to peddle their recycled narrative: anything they dislike must be fascism. A military parade in Washington D.C. is suddenly a “Soviet-style” stunt—unless of course it’s hosted by a Democratic president, in which case it becomes “a stirring display of national pride.”
The statue’s plaque quotes world leaders who dared to respect Trump, as if admiration from foreign heads of state is some kind of scandal. What exactly is the point? That peace talks with Kim Jong Un or strength-based diplomacy with Putin and Orban is treasonous? That’s not art—it’s a bumper sticker with a grudge.
This isn’t protest—it’s provocation for provocation’s sake, designed not to inform, but to insult. Let’s be clear: free speech protects your right to be juvenile, performative, and dishonest. But don’t expect your pile of political slop to be treated as profound commentary just because you put it on a pedestal.
Meanwhile, the so-called “No Kings” rallies, timed to undermine a celebration of our military, only reinforce a sad truth: some people would rather march against imaginary tyranny than stand up for real sacrifice.
The “Dictator Approved” statue might stay up until Sunday—but its legacy will be about as lasting as the crowds that never showed up to boo it. What it lacks in craftsmanship, it makes up for in cowardice—unsigned, unoriginal, and unworthy of the soldiers it tries to overshadow.
If you want to protest, fine. But if your message is “Trump is a tyrant,” maybe don’t prove your freedom by showing how little you value it.