A 12-foot statue of President Donald Trump and his once-close friend Jeffrey Epstein has debuted across from the United States Capitol.
The statue will be an awkward welcome home surprise for the president, who has been in Florida meeting with Latin American leaders at a summit intended to crack down on drug cartels in the region.
The towering installation depicts Trump pressed against the late pedophile’s back and holding his outstretched arms, mimicking Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet’s iconic scene from Titanic, the 1997 blockbuster directed by James Cameron.
A plaque on the statue, which sits at 3rd Street W between Madison Dr. and Jefferson Dr., explains the inspiration behind DiCaprio and Winslet’s Jack and Rose.
“The tragic love story between Jack and Rose was built on luxurious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches,” the 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.”
The statue is also flanked by 10 giant banners displaying a now-notorious photo of Trump and Epstein, who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.
“2026 has been a banner year for President Trump,” The Secret Handshake, the artists behind the installation, told the Daily Beast, pointing to the president’s habit of slapping his name or face on traditionally nonpartisan federal buildings.
“We want to help him on his mission by tossing a few of our own in the mix,” they added.
In response, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson wrote in a statement to the Daily Beast: “When will these wealthy Democrat donors create sculptures of Democrats – like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries – who continued to solicit money and meetings from Epstein after he was convicted as a sex offender?”
The Secret Handshake told the Beast that the statue is expected to remain across from the Capitol building for several days. But their previous artwork hasn’t had that same luxury. In October, the anonymous pranksters’ now-infamous Epstein/Trump friendship statue was taken down by the United States Park Police, in violation of the permit it had obtained from the U.S. Department of the Interior, after it reportedly infuriated the White House.
Before that, the artists debuted several works that brought their criticism of Trump into the public eye. In June, an eight-foot sculpture titled “Dictator Approved,” showing a Trumpian thumbs-up crushing the Statue of Liberty’s crown, appeared on the National Mall. A week later, it was replaced with a golden “television” statue depicting Trump dancing shoulder-to-shoulder with Epstein.
Trump has insisted that he and Epstein were never close friends, repeating several times that he distanced himself from the late financier after he was placed on the sex offender registry in 2008, shortly after he pleaded guilty to a charge of solicitation of prostitution with a minor.
But just this week, it was reported that documents detailing FBI interviews with an Epstein victim who accused Trump of sexually abusing her when she was 13 are reportedly being kept under wraps by the Department of Justice.
More than three dozen pages remain missing from the Epstein files, according to an NPR analysis, including “files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor.”
