The latest: Guerrilla art installation 'The Foot Soldier' appears on the National Mall
November 9, 2026.
Tourists and morning commuters strolling across the National Mall on Monday encountered an unexpected, gleaming addition to Washington's pantheon of monuments: a life-sized, spray-painted golden statue of Donald Trump grimacing in an armchair while tenderly nursing his bare right foot.
Titled "The Foot Soldier," the unauthorized guerrilla sculpture was erected in the dead of night along the Mall lawn near the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, timed precisely two days ahead of Veterans Day. The satirical piece was claimed by The Secret Handshake, an anonymous activist art collective known for mounting clandestine, provocative political installations across the nation's capital.
To ensure maximum spectacle, the installation was accompanied on Monday morning by a live street-theater performer clad in a towering six-foot-tall plush big toe costume dubbed "Toey," who posed for selfies with cheering crowds and distributed mock "Official Presidential Podiatry Certificates" to passersby.
Golden statue, biting dedication plaque, and mascot 'Toey'
The statue depicts the 45th and 47th president seated upon a neoclassical chair mounted atop an faux-granite pedestal. Trump's bronze-and-gold likeness features an exaggerated expression of theatrical distress as his hands cup his heel—a direct visual jab at his controversial Vietnam War draft deferments.
Affixed to the front of the plinth is a professional bronze-style plaque bearing an acerbic, tongue-in-cheek dedication:
"We honor the service and sacrifice of our Commander in Chief, Donald J. Trump. He's a soldier in spirit, who marched to the front lines of dodging the draft, armed with a perfect diagnosis of bone spurs. We salute a leader who knows you can't spell sacrifice without 'I,' and a warrior who reminds us that sometimes when you're called to stand up, it's best to just sit down and rest your feet."
The dedication concludes with an authentic quotation from a 2013 social media post authored by Trump himself: "I can be very military."
Beside the plinth, the six-foot mascot Toey engaged amused onlookers, encouraging spectators to rub the golden foot for "good luck and avoidance of civic duty," before United States Park Police officers arrived on scene to evaluate the unpermitted installation.
The 1968 Vietnam draft deferment and Trump's record on military service
The guerrilla installation skewers one of the most enduring controversies of Donald Trump's political career. During the height of the Vietnam War in 1968, after receiving four academic deferments while attending Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania, the 22-year-old Trump received a 1-Y medical conditional deferment due to bone spurs in his heels.
The diagnosis, which effectively spared him from military induction and combat duty, was provided by Dr. Larry Braunstein, a Queens podiatrist who rented his medical practice office from Trump's father, real estate magnate Fred Trump. Decades later, Dr. Braunstein's daughters publicly revealed that the diagnosis had been granted as a "favor" to Fred Trump to prevent his son from being sent to Southeast Asia.
Trump has frequently dismissed criticism of his draft deferments, describing them in past interviews as "a minor medical thing" that eventually healed on its own, while insisting that he maintains profound admiration for America's armed forces.
Mystery collective behind Washington's string of guerrilla monuments
The Secret Handshake has operated as an anonymous collective of sculptors, prop fabricators, and political satirists. Over the past several election cycles, the group has taken credit for placing highly realistic, temporary satirical monuments in prominent civic spaces across Washington, D.C.
Previous pop-up works credited to the collective include a mock desk installation satirizing January 6 rioters placed near Freedom Plaza and a faux bronze statue honoring political campaign donors erected near K Street. The group coordinates with volunteer spotters and logistics crews to deposit multi-hundred-pound sculptures before dawn, taking advantage of open federal parkland access.
The White House swiftly condemned the installation on Monday. In an official response, a administration spokesperson slammed the display: "This is yet another desperate, low-rent stunt by unhinged Democrat activists who suffer from terminal Trump Derangement Syndrome and have no respect for genuine Veterans Day observances."
