Gold Statue of Trump Holding His Foot Appears on National Mall

A gold statue of President Donald Trump sitting down and holding his right foot appeared on the National Mall on Monday, according to the Washington Post. The work, titled The Foot Soldier, mocks one of the five deferments Trump received to avoid being drafted for the Vietnam War.

The Secret Handshake, an anonymous artist collective, claimed the installation. The group has been taunting the president with unsanctioned public sculptures since 2024.

What does the statue actually say?

A plaque at the base carries a sustained piece of deadpan satire:

• "We honor the service and sacrifice of our Commander in Chief, Donald J. Trump. He's a soldier in spirit, who marched to the front lines of dodging the draft, armed with a perfect diagnosis of bone spurs."
• "We salute a leader who knows you can't spell sacrifice without 'I,' and a warrior who reminds us that sometimes when you're called to stand up, it's best to just sit down and rest your feet."

The "bone spurs" line references the medical deferment that kept Trump out of the Vietnam-era draft. During the war, he received five deferments in total, four of them for his college studies.

Who — or what — is Toey?

The statue did not stand alone. A masked mascot in a big-toe costume accompanied it, with nine hairs on the costume and the name "TOEY" printed in block letters. Toey concealed their identity and stayed in character.

"I'm the biggest toe. The hugest toe. Huge. Hugest toe. Largest toe that anyone's ever seen," Toey said, at one point repeating: "Draft dodger? I hardly know her."

How did the White House respond?

White House spokesman Davis Ingle issued a statement on Monday, hours after the installation appeared.

"Trump Derangement Syndrome is a sick and incurable disease that has rotted the brains of these Democrat activists," Ingle said. "President Trump will never waver in fighting for and protecting the American people."

The statement did not address the deferments themselves. Nor did the Washington Post report, cited by ARTnews, indicate whether the National Park Service had removed the statue or charged anyone.

A pattern, not a one-off

The Foot Soldier is the latest entry in the Secret Handshake's growing catalogue of anti-Trump provocations. Previous works include:

• a pile of feces, installed around Election Day;
• an 8-foot-tall sculpture of a gold-painted hand squashing the green crown of the Statue of Liberty;
• a statue of Trump holding hands with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, which has been repeatedly reinstalled throughout Washington, D.C.

The group framed the new work as a response to the current moment. "As Trump continues to wage a war and threaten new ones, it's time to harken back to a time when Donald Trump would do whatever it takes to stay out of combat," the collective said on Monday.

The timing matters: the statue appeared just before Veterans Day, placing the question of who served — and who did not — at the center of the capital's most visible ceremonial ground. Whether the work survives removal, like the Epstein statue before it, will test how much patience D.C. authorities have left for the collective's brand of guerrilla monument-making.