New gilded Trump statue on the National Mall mocks his Vietnam draft deferment

A gilded statue on the Mall

A gilded statue titled 'The Foot Soldier' appeared on Washington's National Mall on Monday, 9 November, near the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art. It shows President Donald Trump seated and rubbing one bare foot, a pose that points to the bone spurs he cited to avoid the Vietnam War draft. The installation went up two days before Veterans Day, which the United States marks on 11 November.

The plaque at its base reads like a mock tribute, calling the president a soldier in spirit who reached the front lines of draft avoidance and crediting him with a flawless bone spur diagnosis. The inscription adds a second jab, which the collective worded this way:

“We salute a leader who knows you can't spell sacrifice without 'I,'”

Five deferments and a disputed diagnosis

Trump received five deferments during the Vietnam War, four for his college studies and one for bone spurs in his heels. Allegations cited in the coverage say he obtained that diagnosis in 1968, after graduating from college. The validity of the diagnosis has since been questioned. A 2018 New York Times article accused a Queens foot doctor of doing a favor for Trump's father by providing the diagnosis. In 2019 the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen informed lawmakers that the president had intentionally stayed out of the draft.

Reaction from the White House and the artists

The Secret Handshake, an anonymous collective of artists, produced the statue. A six-foot toe mascot named Toey stood beside it as an interactive element, and the performer inside, whose identity stayed hidden, joked about the draft in remarks to the Washington Post. The White House answered with a statement from a spokesperson, which said:

“Trump Derangement Syndrome is a sick and incurable disease that has rotted the brains of these Democrat activists.”

The statement also said the president would not back down in defending Americans. On Monday the group argued that, while the president keeps fighting one war and threatening others, people should recall how hard he once worked to stay out of combat. The members remain anonymous, partly out of fear of reprisals from the Trump administration.

Earlier works by the group

The Secret Handshake has been mocking the president since 2024. Its earlier pieces include a statue of Trump holding hands with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which appeared in September 2025 and has been reinstalled repeatedly around Washington. Another work is an eight-foot sculpture in which a golden hand presses down on the Statue of Liberty's green headpiece, alongside a pile of feces. An almost 2.5-metre thumb titled 'Dictator Approved' carried praise for Trump from Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Jair Bolsonaro and Kim Jong-un. The group also made a statue about the remodeling of the Lincoln bathroom during a government shutdown.