WASHINGTON D.C. — On the coldest day of the year, University of Maryland English professor Orrin Wang came to the National Mall on Tuesday to see the anonymous art group The Secret Handshake’s latest protest piece against the Trump administration.
“I don’t know if [protest art pieces] really do anything right now, but they are a document of what people are feeling and remembering about this time,” he said.
A 10-foot tall replica of the birthday card President Donald Trump allegedly wrote him in 2003 appeared on the National Mall on Monday.
Protest art gives people a safe way to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech. In just one night, the card was covered in hundreds of messages from visitors condemning Trump’s presidency and his relationship with Epstein.
Trump has denied writing, drawing and signing the card, which features the outline of a naked woman with a transcript of a conversation between him and Epstein.
A nearby plaque encouraged onlookers to sign the card replica with a message to the Trump administration accompanied by multicolored waterproof markers.
Epstein would have been 73 on Tuesday, but died in prison in 2019. The installation also marks the one year anniversary for Trump’s second term in office.
A month after the congressionally mandated deadline for the Department of Justice to release the The In response to bipartisan legislation the Justice Department released 300,000 redacted pages of the so-called “Epstein files.” Lawmakers criticized the Trump administration for releasing documents that were overly redacted, with entire pages completely blacked out.
In reference to this, the protest display included a replica of a filing cabinet with shredded versions of the redacted files spilling out.
“We have certain things in common, Jeffrey,” the message reads. “Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?… Happy birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
Dozens of people have gathered to take pictures of and contribute to the installation. When it was knocked over by the wind on Tuesday morning, onlookers helped push it back up. Cars stopped as they passed the Capitol.
“Where is democracy when the rich pedophiles are free? And we’ve sold it out to, what, the highest pedophile?” said Krys Feyen, a retiree who regularly travels to D.C. to protest with other Southern women her age. “The government exists at the will of the people. And we, the people, are pissed.”
A permit from the National Park Service will enable the art piece to remain until Friday, according to the Washington Post. On the permit application, the artists wrote that the purpose of the work was “to use creative and artistic free speech about one of the most relevant political issues of this moment, and to highlight the conversation about President Donald Trump’s friendship and relationship with Jeffrey Epstein using his own reported language and correspondence. As well, to highlight the heavily redacted files that have been released and those that haven’t.”
However, Secret Handshake’s earlier statue of Trump and Epstein frolicking together was removed in less than a day, despite a permit.
Before Wang walked away from the installation, he decided to write on the card. In between profanities and phrases condemning Trump’s relationship with Epstein, Wang chose to sign with a couple of lines from William Blake’s poem “Earth’s Answer.”
“Selfish father of men/Cruel, jealous, selfish fear,” he wrote on the card. Wang explained that the themes of the post-French Revolution poem represents how he feels about the Trump administration.
“We can be better than that,” he said. “We can be better than just being selfish and jealous people.”
