Gavin Newsom has mocked the towering gold statue of Donald Trump that is set to feature in the president’s presidential library.
AI-created concept footage of the proposed building, released Monday by Trump’s son Eric, depicts the 79-year-old cast in gold, raising his fist before a seated audience beneath an outsized presidential seal.
The gigantic gold statue quickly drew online attention for its resemblance to monuments associated with notorious dictatorships.
Newsom, 58, made the comparison in an X post from his press office account, writing: “The gold statue in Trump’s new library (of himself) looks awfully familiar to a few others from around the world.”
The collage the California governor shared paired Trump’s proposed statue with images of past regimes’ leader iconography—including a gold figure of North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il Sung. His rule established a rigid hereditary dictatorship marked by repression, prison camps, and tight state control over daily life.
A second image featured former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong, also known as Chairman Mao. His campaigns, such as the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, led to mass famine, political purges, and millions of deaths.
A third was of Saparmurat Niyazov, the Turkmen leader who built an elaborate personality cult, including gold statues of himself, strict censorship, and sweeping controls over public life.
Trump’s long-mooted presidential library, to be constructed in Miami, Florida, has taken shape less as a traditional archive and more as a multimedia showcase centered on his political brand. Supporters have framed the project as a bold reimagining of the presidential library model.
Early plans and fundraising efforts have leaned heavily on private donors and allies, emphasizing spectacle, digital displays, and curated narratives of his presidency rather than a conventional research-focused facility.
The newly released footage appears to double down on that approach. As well as the statue, the video suggests a hulking waterfront spectacle, complete with “TRUMP” branding on the tower, gold escalators, multiple aircraft inside, replicas of the Oval Office, and his planned ballroom—but not a book in sight.
Sharing the video, Eric said that over the last six months he had “poured my heart and soul” into the project.
“This landmark on the water in Miami, Florida will stand as a lasting testament to an amazing man, an amazing developer, and the greatest President our Nation has ever known,” he said on X.
No budget or construction timeline has been publicly finalized.
The Daily Beast contacted the Trump Organization and the White House, whose spokesman Davis Ingle said: “Gavin Newscum is the worst and dumbest governor in America.”
