3 weeks ago

Toppled Trump-Epstein Statue Returns To DC In One Big Hand-Holding Piece

You can’t keep a good statue down.

On Thursday, a faux-bronze statutedepicting a celebration of the “friendship” between President Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — the men are holding hands and prancing in the installation above plaques displaying abirthday cardTrump once gave Epstein — is back up on the National Mall after it wasabruptly removed a week ago.

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“Just like a toppled confederate general forced back onto a public square, the Donald Trump Jeffrey Epstein statue has risen from the rubble to stand gloriously on the National Mall once again,” the leader of Secret Handshake, the group that made the statue, told HuffPost via email on Thursday. “The ‘Why Can’t We Be Friends?’ (originally titled Best Friends Forever) statue is repaired and back up for a limited time on 3rd street just north of the US Capitol.”

As HuffPost reported last week, the group secured a permit for the installation that allowed it to be on the National Mall grounds through Sept. 28. The permit also informed the group that they would be notified of any removal of the statue in advance and that it could be removed at any time if it was deemed out of compliance with local rules.

But after just a single night on display, the installation was removed and destroyed. In a video shared with HuffPost of the toppling, representatives for the National Park Service said they removed the satirical send-up because it was too large.

Secret Handshake told HuffPost that the only problem with the measurements was the errors the Park Service made when assessing the statue for permit approval.

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The specs for the installation were listed accurately at 12 feet, but “the Parks Department, somewhere along the line, forgot to add the base to the permit and only wrote in the 6 feet for the statues,” the group said last week, causing it to be removed.

When the installation was toppled last week, Trump’s head was cracked right down the middle. The fissure has been repaired, but the damage to the statue is visible throughout, including on the placard beneath the men, which features an excerpt of a letter Trump wrote to Epstein, purportedly detailing an imagined conversation between the two men. In that imaginary conversation, Trump tells Epstein “enigmas never age,” to which Epstein was to reply, “It was clear to me the last time I saw you.”

The leader of Secret Handshake, who asked to remain anonymous, said Thursday that they “view this statue the same way Trump views the Confederacy — something that keeps coming back up no matter how many times it’s knocked down.”

“We have been working with the parks department to get it back up. They have knowledge and have given approval that we have the right to have it back up in this location,” they said. “The repair process took about half a day and involved a lot of glue. And not even glue sticks, but like the really complicated expensive kind. Even with repairs, the statue isn’t perfect. But now it has some cool scars, like Omar from ‘The Wire.’”

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The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.