A massive, completely naked statue of President-elect Donald Trump, displayed on private property in Clark County, Nevada in September, provoked an intense backlash from his supporters, coming in the wake of repeated attempts on the former president’s life.
The statue, a 43-foot skin-toned marionette without any clothes, hung from a towering crane.
The artists erected it near the intersection of I-15 and Highway 93, a major crossroads just outside of Las Vegas.
The much, much larger-than-life statue could be easily spotted by passing motorists and swiftly became local and national news.
Called Crooked and Obscene, the foam-based Trump was made by anonymous artists who also took the sculpture to Detroit, Madison, and Philadelphia.
The Vegas statute went up on Sept. 28, just 13 days after a second assassination attempt against Trump, when Ryan Routh allegedly attempted to shoot him during a golf round.
Routh’s arrest came months after Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump in the ear at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Coming amid the already fraught 2024 electoral atmosphere, the statue only heightened Republican outrage over the vitriolic rhetoric around Trump.
Reports of the statue sparked numerous viral social media posts and intense reactions that landed in the inboxes of Clark County officials.
The Daily Dot obtained seven days of external communications about the statue, as Trump supporters criticized its presence, its indecency, and what they incorrectly believed was Clark County’s role in it.
“How pathetic has your counties [sic] leadership become?” wrote one resident.
She condemned the statue, saying it promoted violence, referencing the two assassination attempts on Trump’s life.
Similarly, another resident criticized the display as a “terrorist-like portrayal,” and asked the county’s commissioners how they would feel if they were the ones whose nude bodies were blown up to comically large sizes and displayed in public
“I HATE Obama, Clinton, Bush, Biden… but I would be JUST AS LIVID if this happened to them,” she wrote, saying the statue disrespected the office of the presidency.
The anger at the county was misguided. In response, officials revealed that the statue wasn’t a project that needed permitting from the local government, set up on private property.
But as MAGA fumed, the city had already taken action.
Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick had contacted the property owner shortly after the statue was erected to request that it be taken down. It was, less than 48 hours after its debut.
Almost all the angry emails came after it was removed from the property.
“Clark County did not permit the Trump statue, and it was displayed on private property,” county officials replied to every complaint they received.
While some residents were concerned about children seeing the statue’s inappropriate details, given its proximity to a gas station, others worried about how poorly it spoke for Nevada.
“This is an insult to our country and an embarrassment to Las Vegas,” one wrote in his message.
But if the statue was intended to highlight the danger of Trump, it seems to have failed.
Not only did furious MAGA supporters vehemently decry it, but in every state it was displayed, Trump won.
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