Banksy copycats are putting Trump statues around DC. We asked them why
In the dead of night, anonymous artists have been running amok in Washington. Their target is a powerful man who does not take kindly to criticism.
The guerrilla art collective known as Secret Handshake began targeting President Trump in September.
They built a statue of Trump skipping hand in hand with the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and put it in front of the US Capitol. It was swiftly removed.
A few months later an even more derisive statue of Trump holding Epstein aloft — reminiscent of the scene in Titanic when Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet stand on the bow of the doomed ocean liner — was installed on the National Mall. The White House responded by dismissing the sculptors as “wealthy Democrat donors”.
“I wish I were wealthy,” a member of the group told The Times. “[I am] neither rich nor a Democratic donor.”
Little is known about the backgrounds of the pranksters. The mysterious artists use an intermediary to secure permits from the National Park Service, protecting their identities. Their artworks sometimes last less than a day before they are removed, but they enjoy a long afterlife on social media.
“There are a few of us that work on putting these together,” the group said. The Times contacted Secret Handshake via an email address on their website and corresponded with the artists this week.
It followed the unveiling of their latest installation: a video game satirising the war in Iran entitled Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell. Three arcade cabinets appeared at the War Memorial. Among those seen playing were National Guard troops.
“It’s exactly the audience we’d love to be playing this,” the group said. “We think it’s wonderful to see people serving the country enjoying the game. When we made this, we made sure that the comedy and the critique is wholly toward the administration, not the military and certainly not the people serving in it.”
In the game, which is also online, players inhabit the role of Trump and are prompted to “Order a Diet Coke” or “Invade Iran”. There are interactions with cartoonish versions of Pete Hegseth, the war secretary, and Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. “Ready to ROCK Iran back to the Stone Age?” the game asks. Players can respond “Yes”, “Hell yes” or “Not yet”.
“What we’re doing here is just using the same medium the administration is using to promote their war,” the group said, referring to clips posted by the White House on social media from games such as Grand Theft Autospliced with images of American airstrikes on Iran.
“When you see mass destruction, loss of life and a seemingly aimless bombardment of another country from a president that many voters voted for specifically because of promises to remove the United States from these type of conflicts — and you see all of that repackaged in cartoonish memes and ‘bad-ass’ video-game reels by that very administration — to us it felt necessary to repackage their own cartoonish and ‘bad-ass’ retellings of these atrocities in what would be a satirical but appropriate manner.”
The artists are not above a bit of toilet humour. In March they built a golden lavatory next to the Lincoln Memorial and named it A Throne Fit for a King.
For the Titanic-themed sculpture, the plaque had an inscription comparing the romance between DiCaprio and Winslet’s characters to Trump’s relationship with Epstein: “The tragic love story between Jack and Rose was built on luxurious travel, raucous parties and secret nude sketches,” it read. “This monument honours the bond between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, a friendship seemingly built on luxurious travel, raucous parties and secret nude sketches.”
The president has denied any wrongdoing and says he broke off his friendship with Epstein in the 2000s, when he threw him out of Mar-a-Lago for poaching staff members.
At a time when the political pressure on Trump over his relationship with Epstein has eased, Secret Handshake is trying to draw attention back to the topic, though it thinks it is “very unlikely” that Epstein’s friends in the US will face justice, in contrast with the police investigations into Lord Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in the UK, who have both denied any criminality.
The group said the name Secret Handshake was chosen because of its sense of mischief. “It felt like it could work as a fun kind of kids’ treehouse club name mixed with the opaque, back-room dealings of DC itself,” they said.
Other protest groups such as Led By Donkeys have chosen to reveal their identities, while Banksy was finally revealed to be Robin Gunningham, a Bristolian artist in his fifties, this year.
The anti-Trump protesters want to remain anonymous if they can. “I think we like the idea of letting all of the pieces speak for themselves. The truth is we’re really not that interesting,” they said.
They cited one of their inspirations as the Yes Men, prankster artists who started creating works in the 1990s that were “funny, relevant and smart while also still critiquing society”.
Should the White House brace for more scathing art? “Stay tuned,” they said.
DOCUMENTED REFERENCES
Exploring Documented Records
Public interest in the Epstein case continues not only because of court proceedings and testimonies, but also due to the growing body of documented records that help researchers and readers understand the broader context. Beyond legal files and media reports, some independent projects have organized publicly available data connected to Epstein’s activities.
One example is a structured archive of documented Amazon order records, where purchases are cataloged with dates and product details. While individual items do not prove wrongdoing on their own, examining documented information alongside established facts helps paint a clearer picture of the environment and circumstances surrounding the case.
Browse the structured archive of documented order records
For readers looking to review primary-source style data rather than interpretations, exploring compiled records can provide additional context to the broader discussion.
