Another Trump-Epstein statue pops up on the National Mall

‘The King of the World’ is the latest installation satirizing the president’s relationship with Epstein from a prolific anonymous art group.

The golden spectacle—titled The King of the World—debuted on the National Mall on March 10, 2026. [Photo: Getty Images]

On the morning of March 10, a 12-foot-tall golden statue featuring President Donald Trump embracing the now-deceased convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein appeared on the lawn of the National Mall.

The statue, titled The King of the World, shows Trump and Epstein atop a plinth shaped like a tiny boat, clearly riffing on the iconic scene from James Cameron’s Titanic. It follows a similar statue erected back in November, called Best Friends Forever, which depicted Trump and Epstein frolicking together on the Mall while holding hands. 

“The tragic love story between Jack and Rose was built on luxurious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches,” The King of the World’s plaque reads. “This monument honors the bond between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, a friendship seemingly built on luxurious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches.”

Both statues are the handiwork of “The Secret Handshake,” an anonymous artist collective that has spent the past several months lampooning Trump and his administration with a series of larger-than-life public installations. Recently, the group has directed most of its energy toward calling attention to the 15-year-long friendship between Trump and the disgraced financier, who died in a New York prison cell in 2019. 

Trump and his team have been reticent to address the Epstein files, but the president has historically shown that he’s particularly sensitive to unflattering imagery of himself—and the Secret Handshake is making that unavoidable by repeatedly placing scathing portraits of Trump in what is essentially his front yard.

Art group has history of taking on Trump

The Secret Handshake has taken credit for a mounting portfolio of public parody artworks.

These appear to include Dictator Approved, an image of a thumbs-up crushing the Statue of Liberty; The Resolute Desk, a statue of Nancy Pelosi’s desk covered in a pile of poop as a reference to January 6 rioters; and The Donald J. Trump Enduring Flame, a replica of a fist clutching a tiki torch as a reference to Trump’s failure to condemn the 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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