A 22-foot bronze statue of Donald Trump, covered in gold leaf and nicknamed “Don Colossus,” now stands permanently at Trump National Doral golf course in Miami. It depicts the president with his right fist raised, mirroring the gesture he made moments after surviving the assassination attempt at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally in July 2024. The statue weighs 3.1 tons. It cost at least $450,000. And it has managed to infuriate pastors, delight late-night hosts, and accidentally mirror a scene from a fictional TV show about a fascist superhero, all in the span of about a week.
Let’s talk about how this thing got here, who paid for it, and why the backlash has been so loud.
The Crypto Bros Behind the Statue
The idea for Don Colossus was born in July 2024 inside a Telegram group chat. Ashley Sansalone, a Canadian cryptocurrency developer, saw Trump’s fist-pump photo after the assassination attempt and wanted to turn it into a memecoin. He teamed up with Dustin Stockton, a Republican strategist, and Brock Pierce, a politically connected crypto investor with a long history of legal and financial disputes. Together with other crypto backers, they commissioned Ohio sculptor Alan Cottrill to build the statue for $300,000.
Stockton, by the way, is the same guy whose property was raided by authorities over allegations he was involved in defrauding donors connected to Steve Bannon’s crowdfunded border wall effort. So the cast of characters behind this golden monument is already pretty colorful before the statue even gets poured.
The group used the statue to promote a memecoin called $PATRIOT, which briefly had a market cap of $77.7 million around Trump’s return to office in January 2025. Then Trump launched his own competing memecoin, $TRUMP, and $PATRIOT cratered more than 90 percent within weeks. By early 2026, it was sitting at a market cap of just $2.8 million. The golden statue, in other words, was largely a marketing prop for a coin that face-planted.
The Sculptor Calls It a “Clusterfuck”
Alan Cottrill, 73, has been making sculptures for decades. He’s done statues for Ohio State University and other institutions across the country, working from his foundry in Zanesville, Ohio. He told the Miami New Times that Don Colossus was “the most chaotic commission” of his entire career. His exact quote: “This was a clusterfuck.”
The original commission was $300,000 for the bronze statue. A year later, Cottrill suggested adding gold leaf, a $60,000 upgrade. “It’s like pitching ice water to a man dying of thirst,” he said. “It was not a hard sell.” Then things got messy. The crypto investors started using images of the unfinished statue to market their $PATRIOT token without his permission. Cottrill hit them with a $90,000 copyright fee. They refused to pay it. So Cottrill held the statue hostage, stashing it at an undisclosed location until the money came through.
The final wire transfer of $96,750 didn’t land until April 22, 2026. The backers then demanded Cottrill install the statue the very next day, just ahead of the 2026 PGA Cadillac Championship at Doral. He and his foundry manager drove straight from Ohio to Miami, worked through the night touching up gold leaf until 4 a.m., slept maybe two hours, and then drove 18 hours back. He wasn’t even invited to the official ceremony. Another first for the sculptor.
And about the statue’s proportions: Cottrill admitted he made Trump “even skinnier than he is, a little bit. I knew they’d want that.” Even so, the backers reportedly told him Trump still looked “too big” and specifically asked him to slim the area beneath Trump’s chin. When asked if he’d work with the Trump group again on the upcoming Trump Presidential Tower in Miami, Cottrill’s response was immediate: “F–k no.”
The Golden Calf Debate
The biggest firestorm around Don Colossus isn’t about politics or crypto. It’s about the Bible. Specifically, the golden calf from the Book of Exodus. In that story, the Israelites built a golden idol to worship while waiting for Moses to return from Mount Sinai. When Moses came back and found them worshipping it, he destroyed it. The golden calf has been a symbol of spiritual betrayal and false idol worship for thousands of years.
So when a literal gold-covered statue of a living president gets erected at one of his own properties, led by an evangelical pastor, with the president himself calling in to bless the event, people noticed the parallel immediately. Pastor John Mark Burns, who led the dedication ceremony, seemed to know this was coming. He proactively addressed it, posting on X: “Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf.” He described the statue as “a celebration of life and a powerful symbol of resilience, freedom, patriotism, courage, and the will to keep fighting for America.”
As one commentator noted, once you’re in a position where you have to publicly insist your giant golden statue is not a golden calf, you’ve probably already lost that argument.
Florida Pastors Push Back Hard
A group of religious leaders in Florida came out swinging against Burns and the whole ceremony. One pastor called it straight-up “idolatry and blasphemy,” saying Burns “is not teaching the gospel” and that what happened at Doral has more in common with Christian Nationalism than actual Christianity. Reverend Nyya Toussaint from First Church Miami pointed out that Burns introduced the golden calf comparison himself during the ceremony, trying to get ahead of it. Pastor Laurinda Hafner from Coral Gables Congregational United Church of Christ said she was “deeply disturbed” and called on her followers to turn their eyes “away from golden statues and towards our neighbors who are hungry, who suffer, and who need justice and compassion.”
Burns responded by citing biblical passages about the difference between “honoring” someone and “worshipping” them. He compared the Trump statue to statues of Michael Jordan, Cristiano Ronaldo, and Taylor Swift. Whether those comparisons hold up is, well, a matter of personal interpretation. None of those statues were gold-leafed, none of those ceremonies were led by pastors, and none of those people were sitting presidents.
Late Night and The View Had a Field Day
The comedic response was predictable but still pretty entertaining. Stephen Colbert pointed out a small detail on the statue that he said undercut the whole larger-than-life tribute, turning it into a punchline. He also mocked Burns’ preemptive denial of idol worship: “A little suspicious to deny worshiping false idols before anyone accuses you of it.” Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, joked about the golden calf parallels and suggested God might already be sending plagues. Jack White posted on Instagram calling it blasphemy.
Over on The View, Ana Navarro said she didn’t even recognize who the statue was supposed to be: “I actually don’t know who that statue is of, because it’s a skinny guy with a tight neck.” That tracks with what Cottrill said about being asked to slim Trump down. Sunny Hostin called it “tacky.” Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “If you have to say it’s not a golden calf, you’re probably going a little too close to idolatry.” Whoopi Goldberg reminded viewers that Trump has also had banners of his face hung from buildings in Washington, D.C.
The Boys Creator: “Seriously What the F**k?”
Perhaps the most surreal reaction came from Eric Kripke, the creator of Amazon’s hit show The Boys. Just days before the Don Colossus ceremony, Season 5 of The Boys aired an episode called “Though the Heavens Fall” on May 7. In it, Antony Starr’s character Homelander, a narcissistic, authoritarian superhero, stares up at his own golden statue. It’s meant as dark satire of authoritarian hero worship.
Three days later, a real golden statue of a real president was standing at a real golf course. Kripke posted a side-by-side on Instagram with the caption: “Seriously what the fuck?” He later told Polygon: “It’s just really hard to out-satire this world.” The comparison spread fast across social media, with many people noting that when fiction and reality look identical, satire kind of stops working.
Trump Loved It (Obviously)
Trump promoted the statue on Truth Social, calling it “the real deal” and saying it was “put there by great American Patriots.” He reportedly texted Burns “It LOOKS FANTASTIC” after seeing the finished gilded version. He called into the dedication ceremony and addressed the crowd through Burns’ phone, which was held up to a microphone. The White House denied any official involvement in the event, though Trump’s personal enthusiasm was hard to miss.
Religious scholars noted this isn’t an isolated incident. Trump has previously appeared in AI-generated videos with giant golden statues of himself, including one in a promotional vision for Gaza and another related to his future presidential library. As New York magazine’s Margaret Hartmann wrote: “It says a lot about our current president that in response to the news that a giant gold statue of Donald Trump was dedicated this week, you have to ask, which one?”
A religious scholar told Newsweek that individually, these things might be easy to dismiss. But as part of a pattern, they start to look like “a kind of effort at deification.” Whether you see Don Colossus as patriotic art, a crypto marketing stunt, or something that would make Moses flip a table, one thing is clear: a 3.1-ton gold statue of a sitting president is now a permanent fixture at a golf course in Miami, and it isn’t going anywhere.