In a city accustomed to political theater, a new bronze spectacle appeared on the National Mall this week—a monument to a friendship one man would rather forget.
A ten-foot-tall statue of President Donald Trump and the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, a notorious convicted sex offender, painted a garish bronze, held hands as if caught in a gleeful skip.
Their feet were lifted, their smiles fixed—a bizarre tribute to a bond that has proven to be a persistent ghost in the machinery of the current administration.
Titled Best Friends Forever, the installation’s plaque declared it was placed “In Honor of Friendship Month,” celebrating “the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein.”
The plaque, adorned with a heart shape made by two hands, featured a quote from a sexually suggestive note allegedly written by Trump to Epstein: “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.”
The statue, erected by the anonymous group The Secret Handshake, was a brazen act of satire that lasted less than a day before authorities made it vanish in the pre-dawn darkness.
The National Park Service, which had issued a permit for the display, sent U.S. Park Police to remove the statue, stating it was “not compliant with the permit issued.”
The Secret Handshake tells a different story—one of a permit revoked without the required 24-hour notice, and of a statue forcibly toppled, broken, and hauled away.
A member of the group, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said they discovered “some people within the parks department, aka most likely the Trump administration, were trying to find ways to say we were not in compliance.”
A satirical statue of Donald Trump and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, titled “Best Friends Forever,” was erected on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., by an anonymous artist group called The Secret Handshake.
After being removed and damaged by the National Park Service in late September 2025, the group repaired and reinstalled the sculpture on October 2, 2025, with a new permit.
The White House, for its part, had already dismissed the artwork, with spokesperson Abigail Jackson stating, “Liberals are free to waste their money however they see fit—but it’s not news that Epstein knew Donald Trump, because Donald Trump kicked Epstein out of his club for being a creep.”
This artistic provocation is just the latest in a series of satirical statues from The Secret Handshake, which has previously installed a pile of feces on a replica of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s desk and a “Dictator Approved” golden thumb crushing the Statue of Liberty’s crown.
Yet the Best Friends Forever statue strikes a uniquely raw nerve.
The president has long sought to downplay his association with Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in a jail cell in 2019.
He once called him a “terrific guy” in a 2002 interview, but now says he banned him from Mar-a-Lago and had a falling out with him long before Epstein’s federal sex trafficking charges.
The statue’s brief appearance underscores the intense and growing pressure on the Trump administration to release the full trove of documents from the investigations into Epstein—a campaign promise the president has yet to fulfill.
The issue has even caused a rift within his own party, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene vowing to read names from a list on the House floor and joining a bipartisan discharge petition to force the release of the files. The petition is now just one signature away from triggering a vote—a move that has placed the administration in an uncomfortable spotlight.
And so, the strange saga of the skipping statues continues—a farcical ballet in the shadow of the Capitol. The Secret Handshake, in a final act of digital defiance, has released 3D printable files of the statue online for anyone to print at home, ensuring that the image of this particular friendship—however unwelcome—will not be so easily erased. It seems that in today’s America, even a broken statue can still carry the weight of an unspoken truth.
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