President Donald Trump’s supporters are not happy with a new gold statue in Washington DC because it depicts the Republican romantically posing with his late friend, the convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.“A couple of families with young children from Pennsylvania skirted the statue and the small crowd that had gathered around it,” The Washington Post reported. “‘I don’t love seeing it here,’ said Josh, who declined to give his last name. ‘It’s a little distasteful and it’s not really helping the conversation.’Similarly a 51-year-old woman named Jane Gilbert, though on the surface agreeing with the statue’s content, argued it was still counterproductive.“It’s so needed for levity and calling out what should not be normalized or hidden,” Gilbert told The Post regarding the statue. “However, it doesn’t actually move the needle any more than social media rants. What is needed is elected officials doing the less glamorous daily and often slow work to help all boats to rise rather then merely keeping us entertained or enraged as we all drown.”On the social media platform X, a user called “Brizel Zalmen” condemned the Post for covering the story, saying “there is NO news there, its only ‘left wing radical 1-sided biased opinions’ there! You will not get ANY news there, you’ll only see attacks on Trump again and again!!”Another social media user simply known as Breakfast Taco claimed the statue is “not even satire because it has no ground in reality.” The user then falsely claimed Trump opposed Epstein’s activities by citing Trump’s business-related falling out with the sex predator and the billionaire’s social call to the police after but not prior to Epstein’s arrest.“Leftists are the most retarded people on the planet,” wrote X user Dredgrehammer68. “This is how the cope.”Another X user called Trump’s Patriot wrote “Lol..epstein hated Trump and owned the demonrat party”The statue in question is nearly 12 feet tall, gold-covered and shows Trump and Epstein in the same pose assumed by actors Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in the classic 1997 movie “Titanic.” The plaque at the base says, “The tragic love story between Jack and Rose was built on luxurious travel, raucous parties, and secret nude sketches. This monument honors the bond between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, a friendship seemingly built on luxurious travel, raucous parties and secret nude sketches.” It is surrounded by 10 individual banners of Trump and Epstein with the words “Make America Safe Again.” To comment on the Epstein file redactions, the insignia of the Department of Justice has the word “Justice” redacted.The same artists behind this statue, who go by the name “The Secret Handshake,” have also created Trump-Epstein statues replicating the birthday note with crude drawing Trump allegedly signed as part of a 2003 birthday book for Epstein and of Trump and Epstein holding hands together with one foot raised behind them. The omnipresent banners apparently dominate the scene along with the statue, which the artists told HuffPost was deliberate.“Because 2026 has been a banner year for President Trump,” the group said. Meaning… he’s added giant banners of his face to federal buildings all across DC. We want to help him on his mission by tossing a few of our own in the mix.”In addition to being friends with Epstein since the 1980s and often partying with Epstein in the presence of young women, Trump was accused in 2019 by a Jane Doe of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in the 1980s. The FBI interviewed her four times about the encounters, and Trump’s Justice Department tried to suppress the documents until public outrage put them front and center.”And this latest example of the missing files about the allegations, and they are absolutely nothing more than allegations, but the FBI interviewed that witness four times,” Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee who Trump defeated in that year’s election, testified before Congress. “You don’t interview a non-credible witness four times. You don’t put into the FBI reporting ‘protect this source’ if you think there is nothing to it. So, of course, I would like to know, like every other American deserves to know, what is in those files and who is going to hold people accountable? Because the Justice Department seems to be either unwilling or incapable of doing so.”Clinton testified before Congress because, like Trump, former President Bill Clinton also had a longtime friendship with Epstein. Unlike Trump, however, Clinton has never been accused of sexual misconduct related to that friendship.“No one believes that President Clinton was anything more than an acquaintance of Jeffrey Epstein, all before Epstein was convicted of prostitution with a young girl in 2008,” Dr. Robert J. Shapiro, an economist who was one of Clinton’s top advisers during his presidency, told AlterNet in February. “President Clinton knew him in the same way many, many others did—as part of a large social network of wealthy acquaintances.” After pointing out that not even the Republicans asking Clinton questions suggested the two men were close friends or discussed young women, “as Epstein and President Trump did,” Shapiro added Trump was accused of “forcing himself sexually on a young teenager.”In response to Shapiro’s comments, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told AlterNet in a statement that “just as President Trump has said, he’s been totally exonerated on anything relating to Epstein. And by releasing thousands of pages of documents, cooperating with the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena request, signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and calling for more investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends, President Trump has done more for Epstein’s victims than anyone before him.”Jackson added, “Meanwhile, Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Stacey Plaskett have yet to explain why they were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender.”
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