I’m all alone on the hypersaturated fairways of Trump National Doral Miami—flush green in this sickening, unreal way, like the sheer rolling hills of the Windows XP wallpaper. I’m wandering up and down cobbled pathways, flitting between the stately driving range and shaved putting greens, dodging rolling golf carts of men in pastel chinos and white visors on their way toward $695 tee times—or just $595 if they wait for what the hotel describes as a “twilight round.” I pass by coral-toned Gothic Revival water fountains blooming with stone cherubs and press my feet into doormats stamped with the regal Trump family crest, immaculately vacuumed until not a mote of lint is visible. Tchotchkes and totems touting the president’s grandeur sprinkle the echoing corridors, while a gift shop overflows with Donald Trump polo shirts, Trump playing cards, and Trump crystalware. It is 90 degrees, I am pouring sweat, and for the life of me, I can’t find the one thing I came here to see: a 22-foot gold-leaf statue of the sitting president, installed on the property this spring.

The statue is perhaps the most brazen expression of Trump’s one-of-a-kind hubris, and if you consider the record, that’s really saying something. It was erected during the final week of April, when one of Trump Doral’s four golf courses—the Blue Monster, famous for its punishing water hazards—hosted the PGA Championship. Dubbed Don Colossus, the statue depicts the president on that fateful afternoon in Butler, Pennsylvania, moments after surviving what would turn out to be the first of many attempts on his life. Golden Trump holds his right fist aloft in triumph, flexing a body that has been rendered trimmer and more muscular than its corporeal counterpart, pudge hemmed in, jawline sharpened, gaze steelier. The whole project was privately bankrolled by—what else?—an anonymous cryptocurrency group behind a meme coin called $PATRIOT.

Despite the churning pace of Trump-era scandals, when stories are lucky to survive more than an hour’s worth of attention, Don Colossus has become an enduring fascination within liberal media. The statue embodies the president’s defiant conceit at the same moment his administration has taken on a decidedly late-Romanov odor, and that has made it a useful heuristic to articulate how it feels to be alive right now. Trump is beset with tanking approval ratings and skyrocketing gas prices, both of which are the result of an Iranian intervention that will be remembered as the man’s most damaging political blunder. Moments like this usually find presidents crouched in defense or sketching out a retreat, but Trump has never been capable of such an inclination—that statue was going up no matter the headwinds. On May 6, a gaggle of religious leaders, led by Pastor Mark Burns, a televangelist, thrice-failed congressional candidate, and board member for an entity called Pastors for Trump, flocked to Doral to consecrate the statue.

It is unusual for a pastor to wreath a sculpture of a mortal with divine favor, and Burns grew oddly curdled about that fact: “Let me be clear: This is not a golden calf,” he wrote on X, hours after the dedication. “This statue is a celebration of life. It is a symbol of resilience, freedom, patriotism, strength, and the willpower to keep fighting for the future of America.”

I do not envy anyone who has found themselves in a position where they feel the need to preemptively head off charges of idolatry. But Trump certainly savored the ovation. Partway through his spiel, Burns activated the speaker on his iPhone and held it to the microphone so the president could address the crowd.

“I want to thank everybody there,” Trump said. “I........

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