As Jimmy Kimmel has taught us, we know Donald Trump’s widdle fee-fees can’t handle being mocked. So that is all the more reason to love The Secret Handshake for repeatedly staging installation art on the National Mall that pokes fun at the wannabe king.
The group’s latest installation is a 10-foot tall, “Iran War Participation Trophy” for Commander Bone Spurs.
“The statue, spray-painted gold with “#1” embossed on one side, features the word “Participant” in raised block letters on its base,” The Washington Post reports. A large plaque states, “We hereby award President Donald J. Trump this participation trophy for his enthusiastic involvement in the Iran War. While some concern themselves with military strategy, diplomacy, or measurable outcomes, President Trump demonstrated the courage to participate regardless of the final score.”
Another plaque urges the public to add their own trophies. “No accomplishment is too distant, too small, or too unearned to bestow on President Trump,” it says. A member of The Secret Handshake told The Post, “We are prepared to hand deliver it to him along with the trophies donated by the public.”
Last year, the art group put up a 12-foot statue of President Donald Trump and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands. A plaque read, “In Honor of Friendship Month: We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend’ Jeffrey Epstein.” A few months earlier, the group installed an 8-foot-tall sculpture called “Dictator Approved.” It showed “a gold-painted hand with a distinctive thumbs-up squashing the sea foam green crown of the Statue of Liberty,” The Post reported at the time.
However, unlike the previous works, Trump’s Iran War Participation Trophy is in a “much less visited part of the Mall,” according to The Post.
Still, we know the satire has hit its mark. “These untalented ‘artists’ should stick to their ugly ‘art’ and refrain from weighing in on foreign policy — which they clearly know nothing about, given the fact that the United States Military achieved all of its objectives during Operation Epic Fury,” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in an email to The Post. Yeah, “achieved all of its objectives” in a war that was supposed to end months ago and for which Trump has no end in sight.
As University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Professor Luvell Anderson wrote for Common Dreams last October, "Although humor can seem trivial to some, we should not underestimate its power to shift cultural agendas.” Calling satirical humor “one of the remaining glimmers of hope we have left in the fight against authoritarian rhetoric,” he added, “Long live its sting.”
