America Stepped Back - When a President Forced the Country to Look in the Mirror

It began with a head. Not a symbol made of marble, but a piece of latex, modeled after the face of the man who was soon to once again become the most powerful person in the Western world. In October 2024, this likeness lay on the floor of the Superchief Gallery in Los Angeles - kicked around by visitors like a ball. Donald J. Trump - degraded into a projection surface for a country in a state of inner disarray. The exhibition was called American Punchline. And the joke was over. What began as an artistic affect, as a valve, as a performative kick against an authoritarian comeback, would a few months later prove to be a bitter foreshadowing of reality. Because the man whose image was then trampled with football boots is now once again governing the United States - with greater power, less control, and an apparatus increasingly collapsing under its own gravity. What art anticipated has caught up with history.

By June 2025, the unease had solidified into a structural fever. On the National Mall in Washington now stood a sculpture, eight feet tall, gold-painted: a thumbs-up - at first glance a symbol of success. But beneath the thumb, the crown of the Statue of Liberty was being crushed. Dictator Approved was the name of the piece. Engraved on its base: praises from Putin, Bolsonaro, Kim Jong-un. Here, art became an indictment. And at the same time, a chronicle of a loss of control. Because while the symbol stood, a second civil war broke out within the government system - not on the streets, but in the corridors of power. No bullets, but tweets. No tanks, but legal codes. At the center of the conflict: President Trump himself - and his targeted attack on the independence of the Federal Reserve.

The implosion began quietly - with a tweet. Bill Pulte, a loyal mouthpiece of the Trump camp and since spring 2025 director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, caused a stir with an angry post. The target: Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve. Pulte demanded his immediate resignation, as Powell - despite increasing economic uncertainty - refused to lower interest rates. The tweet remained online. And Donald Trump, long since more than just president, now the personified feedback loop of outrage, followed up: Powell was THE WORST, a real dummy, who was costing America billions. A red line was crossed. The Federal Reserve is not a political toy. Its independence is legally protected - a safeguard against precisely the temptation Trump now openly pursues: the political control of money. If he goes through with it and attempts to dismiss Powell, the country would face an institutional rupture of historic proportions. Commentators were already speaking of a cold coup against the central bank.

A system under siege: Trump's attack was not limited to the Fed. It was a pattern. Under the same pretext - national security - foreign students were forced to make their social media profiles public. Those who expressed pro-Palestinian views risked being denied entry, those who were politically active were summoned. Harvard was instructed to stop admitting international students - an order the university successfully challenged. For now. Meanwhile, Trump's cabinet split into two camps: the economic warriors, ready to bring every independent institution under executive control - and the remaining voices of moderation, unwilling to replace economic reality with ideology. Even on foreign policy matters, such as how to deal with Iran, an internal power struggle raged. While Carlson, Bannon, and other national conservatives warned against another war, Trump's security team pushed for escalation. The result: no strategy, only confrontation.

The aesthetics of decomposition: What began in a gallery in October 2024 was now reflected in the government itself. The figure of the president, once an artwork being kicked, had become the reality of a democracy under pressure - legally, institutionally, emotionally. Art, protest, justice, and administration all revolved around the same core: a man who saw power not as a mandate, but as a spectacle. The United States of 2025 was no longer a country of conditions, but of condition reports. Nothing was stable, everything was commentary. A president who ignored courts, discredited journalism, dismantled universities, and dictated monetary policy via hashtag - and a population oscillating between alienation and radicalization.

Some kicked heads. Others built sculptures. And many remained silent - exhausted, unsettled, overwhelmed. What was left? A country that no longer recognized itself - and therefore stepped into the mirror. Every kick against Trump's likeness was a warning, not a game. And every political escalation since then an echo of that warning. The institutions groaned. Society fractured. And art said what words could no longer express: that this president did not endure criticism - he provoked it, to the point of exhaustion. Because in the end, the question was no longer who governed - but how much truth a democracy can withstand before it shuts itself down.