California Gov. Gavin Newsom perfectly slammed President Donald Trump by comparing a proposed gold statue of the president—planned for display in Trump’s future presidential library—to the grandiose monuments erected for authoritarian leaders throughout history.
Eric Trump, the president’s son, released a video Monday showcasing renderings of the proposed Donald J. Trump Presidential Library in Miami, Florida.
In one scene, the video depicts an auditorium with tiered seating facing a stage where a towering gold statue of Trump is shown raising his fist.
Trump has long demonstrated a preference for gold décor and has even added gilded accents and furniture to the Oval Office to match his aesthetic of choice.
He has also been known to openly promote his own likeness; the White House these days even displays a portrait of him surviving his 2024 assassination attempt and the administration has displayed banners of Trump's face at the Department of Justice.
Newsom responded to the revelation that Trump intends to unveil a gold statue of himself at his upcoming presidential library with a post on X comparing Trump to other authoritarian leaders who had gold statues of their own, including former Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong, North Korea’s Kim Il-Sung and Turkmenistan’s Saparmurat Niyazov:
"The gold statue in Trump’s new library (of himself) looks awfully familiar to a few others from around the world."
You can see his post below.
Newsom clocked the narcissism immediately—and people pointed out this is just another example of Trump—who infamously declared he would be a dictator on "day one"—living out his dictatorial aspirations.
According to the renderings, Trump’s presidential library would be housed in a skyscraper with the name TRUMP displayed in large capital letters at the top. In the images, the proposed tower looms over the surrounding Miami skyline.
The nearby Freedom Tower—once a refugee processing center for Cuban asylum seekers and now a museum—appears only about a quarter of the size of the planned structure.
The Trump Library Foundation received nonprofit status from the IRS through an unusually swift approval process. Much of the public funding the foundation has secured so far has come from high-profile settlements with media companies following lawsuits filed by Trump.
Tax filings indicate the foundation aims to raise nearly $1 billion over the next three years while Trump remains in office. Presidential libraries are also one of the few avenues through which sitting presidents can accept foreign donations without being required to publicly disclose the donors.
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