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‘Don Colossus,’ a golden statue of President Trump, waits for its home


‘Don Colossus,’ a golden statue of President Trump, waits for its home

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By 
The New York Times

It’s known as “Don Colossus.”

At 15 feet tall, the statue of President Donald Trump, mounted on its 7,000-pound pedestal, is about the height of a two-story building — a giant effigy cast in bronze and finished with a thick layer of gold leaf.

For more than a year, the golden statue has been at the center of one of the stranger moneymaking ventures of the Trump era. A group of cryptocurrency investors paid $300,000 to have a sculptor create it as a tribute to Trump, an outspoken crypto proponent.

Then they used it to promote a meme coin called $PATRIOT.

Now, improbably, the project appears close to fruition. A pedestal made of concrete and stainless steel was installed last month on the grounds of Trump’s golf complex in Doral, Florida. Pastor Mark Burns, one of the organizers of the effort and a friend of Trump’s, told his collaborators that the president planned to attend the statue’s unveiling there, according to messages reviewed by The New York Times.

“It LOOKS FANTASTIC,” Trump wrote to Burns in December.


***


Trump’s Relentless Self-Promotion Fosters an American Cult of Personality

President Trump has engaged in a spree of self-aggrandizement unlike any of his predecessors, fostering a mythologized superhuman persona and making himself the inescapable force at home and around the world.

By Peter Baker, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/us/politics/trumps-american-cult-of-personality.html

The efforts to exalt himself, however, have accelerated in the past year far beyond his first term and have increasingly come to resemble eccentric regimes in far corners of the world. To those who have spent time in the former Soviet Union, the “Don Colossus” statue bears a striking resemblance to the rotating gold statue erected by Saparmurat Niyazov, the megalomaniacal former dictator of Turkmenistan who called himself Turkmenbashi and even renamed the months of the year after himself and his family.

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At the center, a golden statue of a person in a suit and cloak rises from a fountain. Surrounding it are golden animal statues and a tall white and gold monument under a blue sky.
A statue of Saparmurat Niyazovm, the former president of Turkmenistan, in Ashgabat in 2023.Credit...Natalia Kolesnikova/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


The dark, weathered statue of a person's head and uniform is tilted against a cloudy sky. Trees and an orange bus are visible in the background.
A statue of Joseph Stalin in Gori, Georgia, in 2019. Mr. Trump does not seem concerned that he might be heading down a dangerous path.Credit...Daro Sulakauri for The New York Times




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