Friendship Cast in Bronze - A Monument That Haunts Trump

Washington awoke this Tuesday morning with a grotesque surprise: In the middle of the National Mall since sunrise stands a twelve-foot-high monument showing Donald Trump and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in intimate togetherness - hand in hand, smiling, as if they were about to stroll together toward the Washington Monument. The title: “In Honor of Friendship Month.” Who is behind it? An anonymous artist group called The Secret Handshake, which apparently has no fear of symbolism. The Secret Handshake, die offenbar keine Angst vor Symbolik hat.

The statue is made of foam, resin, wood and wire, but what it truly carries is the weight of memory. Beneath the pedestal are three plaques, two of them with excerpts from an alleged birthday letter Trump is said to have written to Epstein for his 50th. In it: bawdy drawings, a naked stick figure, along with a signature imitating Trump’s handwriting. The document was made public this summer by the House Oversight Committee. Trump responded with a ten-billion-dollar lawsuit and insisted, “there is no authentic letter and no drawing.”

In Honor of Friendship Month

We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his “closest friend” Jeffrey Epstein.

Voice Over: Voice Over: There must be more to life than simply having everything.

The White House fumed. A spokesperson called the installation “liberal waste of money” and tried to steer the narrative back onto familiar tracks: Trump had “thrown Epstein out of his club because he was a creep.” It was the Democrats and the media, he said, who had remained silent for years while Trump had long demanded “transparency.” Only: transparency in this case means that the monument is visible to everyone - and it recalls a past that cannot be talked away. For the friendship between the two men is documented. Photos show them at parties in the 1990s, at Trump’s wedding to Marla Maples, arm in arm with celebrities. Trump himself called Epstein “a terrific guy” in a 2002 interview with New York Magazine. And Epstein, shortly before his downfall, boasted in a recording that Trump was his “closest friend.” The connection only broke in the mid-2000s. When Epstein was arrested for human trafficking in 2019, Trump declared that he had not had contact for 15 years. Later he promoted the version that Epstein had “stolen young female employees from the club.” New York Magazine einen „fantastischen Kerl“. Und Epstein wiederum prahlte noch kurz vor seinem Sturz in einem Mitschnitt damit, Trump sei sein „engster Freund“. Die Verbindung zerbrach erst Mitte der 2000er. Als Epstein 2019 wegen Menschenhandels verhaftet wurde, erklärte Trump, er habe seit 15 Jahren keinen Kontakt mehr gehabt. Später bemühte er die Version, Epstein habe ihm „junge Angestellte aus dem Club gestohlen“.

DONALD J. TRUMP

Yes, there is. But I won’t tell you what it is.

We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.

Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?

A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday -
and may every day be another wonderful secret.

(Signature: Donald)

Now a statue condenses all of this into one scene: two men, frozen in a pose that feels like mockery. “Celebrate the long-lasting bond,” reads one of the plaques. The artists wanted the work to remain until Saturday. Whether the Park Service or the White House will put an end to the spectacle earlier remains open.

Trump himself has been haunted in recent months by the “Epstein Files.” Since the Department of Justice officially declared in July that there was no “client list” and no further revelations about the billionaire’s death, the president has intensified his defensive stance. He now routinely calls Epstein a “creep” and portrays himself as an opponent of the system that kept silent for so long. Yet every new release, every photo, every sentence, every memory pulls him back into this past - and the artist group has now cast this ambivalence in foam and wire.

The National Mall is home to many monuments: presidents, wars, heroes. But rarely has a statue been as much a commentary as this work - a commentary on power, closeness, guilt and repression. It is art as indictment, satire as mirror. And so Trump now stands in Washington, immortalized in an embrace he never wanted to see.