They call it Don Colossus.

A 22-foot bronze statue at Trump National Doral golf course in Miami, draped in gold leaf and surrounded by palm trees, dedicated with prayers and tears by evangelical pastors who held a phone to a microphone so the president could bless his own monument by speakerphone.

Truly, we live in the most dignified of times.

Seriously though, the president of the United States did not attend the dedication of his own golden monument. He called in. By phone. His crowd of devotees listened in rapt joy to the man whose 22-foot effigy stood gilded before them — remotely, from anywhere but there, doing something more important than witnessing people weep over a statue of his own fist. Even Narcissus had the decency to show up in person.

The statue was commissioned by cryptocurrency investors for $300,000 as a promotional vehicle for their memecoin — called, without irony, $PATRIOT.

The sculptor, an Ohio artist named Alan Cottrill, reportedly held the thing hostage in a warehouse until he was paid in full. This guy built a golden idol, and then refused to release the golden idol until the golden idol’s disciples paid their debts. There is something almost theological about that.

The pose mimics Trump’s fist pump at Butler, Pennsylvania, the moment an assassin’s bullet grazed his ear. So we have a gold-leafed crypto advertisement, installed at a golf resort, depicting a man pumping his fist after surviving an attempt on his life — and an evangelical pastor calling it a symbol of God’s protection.

It looks like a hood ornament that fell off a 1979 Lincoln Town Car and kept growing.

Everyone has been comparing this thing to the golden calf — the idol cast by the Israelites in Exodus while Moses was on the mountain. The pastor himself, Mark Burns, felt compelled to address this at the podium: “Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf.”

He’s right. It isn’t.

A golden calf, at least, was made of something the people actually surrendered. They melted their own earrings. They gave up something real to build it.

MAGA handed over their critical thinking, their savings, their kids’ futures, and their dignity years ago, and they’ve got nothing to show for it but a $PATRIOT memecoin and a gilded statue they’ll never touch.

This is not a golden calf. This is a golden ass.

And they are worshipping it on their knees.
The crowd of invited guests — reportedly almost a dozen — sat reverently around the display while a pastor prayed over it. The president called in. Men wept. A movement that styles itself as the last defense of American Christianity gathered at a golf resort to consecrate a bronze advertisement for a memecoin.

Before the unveiling, the statue was draped in white and blue fabric described as resembling a Greek toga. They dressed a gold Trump statue in a toga. At a golf course. In Miami. And apparently not a single person in the room looked around and asked what they were doing with their lives.

Somewhere, Moses is throwing the tablets again, and frankly you can’t blame him.

But I would be criminally remiss if I moved on without discussing who cut the ribbon to officially reveal this “art”. That honor went to Brock Pierce.

Pierce is a former child actor, turned cryptocurrency entrepreneur, turned personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein. In 2012, Pierce emailed Epstein: “I had a great time with the girls. Hope they had fun too.”

That same year, he sent Epstein photographs of a Ukrainian woman, writing that “Ukraine is now my favorite country” — after Epstein had asked him to “take photos and find me a present.”

This is the man who cut the ribbon.
Not a general. Not a senator. Not a veteran or a statesman.

The man who emailed Jeffrey Epstein about the girls cut the ribbon on the golden monument to the president of the United States.

And no one at the ceremony said a word about it. Nobody cared even a little. Shiny thing > morals.

MAGA has a gift — perhaps their most reliable one — for being distracted by a shiny object directly in front of them while something unspeakable happens just off camera. The statue gleams. The ceremony moves. The pastor prays. The phone call goes up to the microphone.

And the man with the scissors has emails in the Epstein Files.

This is the Church of Trump.

This is the golden idol they have built and the congregation who flocks to genuflect to a golden ass.

An Epstein associate cut the ribbon, a pastor said the prayer, and our president called in by speakerphone. This is what they mean when they say God Bless America.