On the morning of March 10, a 12-foot-tall golden statue featuring President Donald Trump embracing the now-deceased convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein appeared on the lawn of the National Mall.
The statue, titled The King of the World, shows Trump and Epstein atop a plinth shaped like a tiny boat, clearly riffing on the iconic scene from James Cameron’s Titanic. It follows a similar statue erected back in November, called Best Friends Forever, which depicted Trump and Epstein frolicking together on the Mall while holding hands.
“The tragic love story between Jack and Rose was built on luxurious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches,” The King of the World’s 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.”
Both statues are the handiwork of “The Secret Handshake,” an anonymous artist collective that has spent the past several months lampooning Trump and his administration with a series of larger-than-life public installations. Recently, the group has directed most of its energy toward calling attention to the 15-year-long friendship between Trump and the disgraced financier, who died in a New York prison cell in 2019.
Trump and his team have been reticent to address the Epstein files, but the president has historically shown that he’s particularly sensitive to unflattering imagery of himself—and the Secret Handshake is making that unavoidable by repeatedly placing scathing portraits of Trump in what is essentially his front yard.
Art group has history of taking on Trump
The Secret Handshake has taken credit for a mounting portfolio of public parody artworks.
These appear to include Dictator Approved, an image of a thumbs-up crushing the Statue of Liberty; The Resolute Desk, a statue of Nancy Pelosi’s desk covered in a pile of poop as a reference to January 6 rioters; and The Donald J. Trump Enduring Flame, a replica of a fist clutching a tiki torch as a reference to Trump’s failure to condemn the 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The National Park Service (NPS) confirmed in an interview with NPR that the latter two works listed above were lawfully mounted through permits granted to a group called Civic Crafted LLC under the name Julia Jimenez-Pyzik, though the responsible party remains purposefully elusive. Fast Company has reached out to NPS for comment on whether the most recent statue was mounted under a permit.
The Secret Handshake’s satirizing of Trump’s relationship with Epstein began back in November. New documents connecting Trump to Epstein had just been released, including two featuring the president’s signature: one on a risque line drawing of a female body, and one on a picture of Epstein holding up a novelty check bearing Trump’s name.
At the time, Trump made multiple attempts to discredit these documents. The Secret Handshake retaliated with Best Friends Forever, captioning the statue, “We celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein,” referring to a comment made by Epstein in a recording released by author Michael Wolff. By the next morning, the statue had been hauled away by U.S. Park Police.
But the anonymous group wasn’t discouraged. In late January, it erected a 10-foot-tall statue on the Mall directly parodying that aforementioned risque line drawing, inviting visitors to draw their own messages on the card-shaped artwork. And in early March, it appeared to follow up with Jeffrey Epstein Walk of Shame, an installation inspired by the Hollywood Walk of Fame featuring around 20 people associated with Epstein, though it did not officially claim responsibility for this work.
King of the World puts focus back on Epstein ties
This latest statue comes just days after an NPR investigation found that the Department of Justice had withheld multiple documents relating to Trump from its public release of the Epstein files, leading the DOJ to release new documents in which a woman alleges that she was assaulted by Trump as a minor. The president has yet to face any serious questioning or legal consequences for his appearances in the files.
Alongside The King of the World statue, the Secret Handshake erected multiple banners of the two men in the style of several real banners that Trump has mounted of himself around America’s capital. The Secret Handshake’s banners feature Trump and Epstein and the president’s anti-immigration slogan, “Make America Safe Again.”
In an interview with Huffpost, a spokesperson for the Secret Handshake explained the banners: “Because 2026 has been a banner year for President Trump. Meaning . . . he’s added giant banners of his face to federal buildings all across D.C. We want to help him on his mission by tossing a few of our own in the mix.”
Given the anonymity of its members, the Secret Handshake hasn’t shared much about its methods or mission on the record. But the group’s tactic is clear: While Trump, and many other powerful figures, continue to dodge accountability for their association with Epstein, these artists are bringing their protests off of social media and into the real world, making them literally impossible to ignore.
