The unauthorized 43-foot nude statue of Donald Trump in a Philadelphia park has been condemned by the city’s Republican Party leader, who has filed an obscenity report with the police.
“It’s appalling. There’s two day cares and a school right here and you can see it from the El,” said Philadelphia GOP Chair Vince Fenerty, referring to the elevated train line that runs nearby in the Pennsylvania city.
As reported by Newsweek, the statue of Trump appeared in Philadelphia earlier this week at Maja Park on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The statue appears to show Trump leering at a nude statue at the park. It appeared along with a plaque titled “In Honor of a Lifetime of Sexual Assault” at the base. The plaque includes comments from Trump’s Access Hollywood tape, published in October 2016, in which he made lewd comments about women with host Billy Bush.
The sculpture depicts the former president as a marionette, suspended by a crane and has drawn significant attention and backlash from the GOP, who view it as a provocative and inappropriate portrayal of Trump.
Fenerty, who has himself been at the center of sex scandals, said officers had told him that due to the statue’s graphic nature, police asked for it to be disassembled, despite the space having been rented for 24 hours by the artists, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
A 43-foot-tall naked statue of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is displayed north of Las Vegas, Nevada, September 28, 2024. A Republican official has filed an obscenity complaint against a similar display in a park in Pennsylvania.
Ronda Churchill / AFP/Getty Images
In 2016, Fenerty resigned amid numerous sexual harassment claims at the Philadelphia Parking Authority in 2016, before staging a recent comeback as chair of the city’s Republican Party.
Newsweek contacted the police department and Fenerty on Friday via email outside of working hours for comment.
An identical statue has been seen in Detroit, Nevada and Portland, Oregon, where it was beheaded soon after it was erected.
An anonymous spokesperson for the unnamed artist behind the statues has said that the massive sculpture was called Crooked and Obscene. As previously reported, The Wrap said that the effigy will travel the U.S. as part of a Crooked and Obscene Tour.
The report quoted the tour’s unnamed organizers, who said that portraying Trump nude was “intentional, serving as a bold statement on transparency, vulnerability, and the public personas of political figures,” and that they wanted viewers to think about “transparency—or lack thereof—in politics, challenging viewers to think critically about political influence.”
The foam effigy of Trump weighs about 6,000 lb, according to The Detroit Free Press, which reported an appearance at Detroit‘s Lincoln Street Art Park. Another sighting of the statue was just off Interstate 15 near Las Vegas last month.
Project representatives have yet to publicly identify themselves or give details as to how the project came to be or is funded, said the Detroit Free Press, but the appearance of the statues is seen as part of a clear protest movement ahead of the 2024 election.
So far, the project has been met with both amusement and derision from members of the public.
