What To Know
- Rachel Maddow highlighted a new protest statue on Washington’s National Mall depicting Donald Trump.
- The statue’s sarcastic plaque mocks Trump’s bone-spur draft deferment during the Vietnam War.
- Anonymous art collective Secret Handshake created the statue to criticize Trump’s Iran War.
Rachel Maddow took great delight in highlighting a new statue mocking President Donald Trump, which was unveiled on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Monday (November 9).
The MS NOW anchor showed photos of the protest statue, named “The Foot Soldier,” which features a golden Trump sitting with one shoe off and grimacing as he rubs his bare foot. As Maddow noted, the monument stands opposite the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden, between Seventh and Ninth streets.
Maddow read from the sarcastic plaque, “We honor the service and sacrifice of our Commander in Chief, Donald J. Trump; he is a soldier in spirit who marched to the front lines of dodging the draft, armed with a perfect diagnosis of bone spurs.”
The plaque ends with a real quote from Trump, which Maddow said came from a social media post in which the president bragged about having “high rank” at his “military-themed boarding school.” At the time, Trump said, “I can be very military.”
Mehmet Eser/Anadolu via Getty Images
Maddow laughed as she reminded viewers that Trump cited “bone spurs” as “the justification for the deferment that kept him out of the Vietnam War.”
She also pointed out that alongside the statue there is a guy in a full-body toe costume called Toey, complete with “toe hairs,” which made Maddow gag. The baseball-team-style mascot has reportedly been telling visitors he is “the hugest toe… the largest toe that anyone’s ever seen.”
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“So, happy Veterans Day, everybody,” Maddow added.
The statue is the work of the anonymous art activist group Secret Handshake. As Maddow noted, the group previously installed the January 6 commemorative statue on the National Mall, a replica of the congressional office with a pile of feces left behind by MAGA supporters. Another saw statues of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein “gleefully kicking up their heels together while hand in hand.”
“Since the President is so focused on waging wars, we wanted to pay tribute to a time when he would do just about anything to avoid combat,” Secret Handshake wrote about the latest instalment. “If only he could have gotten a doctor’s note on the way to invading Iran or wherever we threaten next.”
You can watch the segment in the video above and let us know your thoughts below.
The Rachel Maddow Show, Mondays, 9/8c, MS NOW