Donald Trump has long shown no difficulty adopting the stern, take-charge persona of a commander in chief.
He once boasted that he knew more about ISIS than the generals, and this year he pulled the country into a confrontation with Iran.
Yet when it was his turn to answer the call, the president managed to stay at home.
During the Vietnam War, Trump racked up five draft deferments while young men, many of them Black and working-class, were shipped overseas.
His words about those who did go to war haven’t helped.
A former governor unleashes a cutting insult about Trump’s military past, escalating their feud
Trump launches an assault against a decorated war hero he cannot even recognize, and a single word exposes it all
The president is famous for saying he likes people “who weren’t captured” when talking about the late Sen. John McCain, and he still denies reports that he called fallen troops “suckers” and “losers.”
So with Veterans Day nearing, someone decided Trump deserved a tribute of his own. They placed it in his front yard, not far from his expensive Washington, D.C., renovation projects.
At first glance, it resembles the gilded monument Trump would have commissioned for himself. But a closer look reveals a different message in the pose.
According to DC News Now, an anonymous art collective called The Secret Handshake installed the sculpture along Madison Drive NW, opposite the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden on the National Mall. The group, which has trolled Trump with more than a dozen satirical works in the last two years, says it will stand through Veterans Day on November 11.
The White House quickly fired back. Spokesperson Davis Ingle blamed “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” claiming it has “rotted the brains” of “Democrat activists.” The group told The Daily Beast that the diagnosis, sadly, “does not qualify for us to skip out on the latest war he’s created.”
So why is the administration so sensitive about a statue? To get the joke, you have to look beyond the gold and the grand pedestal, down to where Trump’s hands are positioned.
The statue is titled “The Foot Soldier,” depicting a golden Trump bent over, grimacing as he grips his bare right foot, his shoe left on the base.
That foot is the entire point. Trump’s fifth deferment, a medical exemption, came in 1968 after a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels. Decades later, the daughters of the Queens podiatrist behind it claimed their father did it as a favor to his landlord, Fred Trump.
The plaque honors Trump as a soldier in spirit who “marched to the front lines of dodging the draft,” ending with a line he really posted about himself in 2013: “I can be very military.”
And the statue didn’t come alone. A 6-foot big toe mascot named Toey has been greeting tourists beside it, and, according to The Washington Post, it joked, “Draft dodger? I hardly know her.” City Cast DC reporter Tristan Espinoza noted on X that Toey, who uses “big/toe” pronouns, was happily posing for photos.
On social media, most people were cackling. One person under an X post joked, “That should be his presidential portrait,” while another declared, “Now there’s a golden statue I can appreciate!”
One user wondered whether Trump would “put it on top of that Triumphal Arch,” his planned monument for the capital. Another got straight to the point: “The only one mocking here is Donald Trump, who is mocking the military with his fictitious deferment status.”
In 2018, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran who lost both legs in combat, said she would not be “lectured about what our military needs by a five-deferment draft dodger,” branding him “Cadet Bone Spurs.”
It isn’t the first gold sculpture to turn Trump into a punchline. In May, the sculptor behind the 22-foot “Don Colossus” at Trump National Doral claimed backers demanded Trump be made thinner.
Fans posing with a Trump bronze at his Palm Beach golf club were roasted when critics noticed its unusually slender figure, and a gold bust unveiled at Mar-a-Lago was mocked for bearing little resemblance to him.
The Secret Handshake has shown up in the past as well, with Trump and Jeffrey Epstein pictured strolling hand in hand, the duo re-creating the “Titanic” bow pose, a golden toilet throne, and an “Iran War Participation Trophy.”
This time, the group aimed directly at the feet. For a president who loves gold monuments, it’s a portrayal he probably won’t be sharing on Truth Social.
