An anonymous protest collective known as the Secret Handshake has installed a 10-foot-tall gold-colored sculpture near the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial bookstore in Washington, D.C. The installation, which arrived on the National Mall on Monday, July 13, carries the title “Iran War Participation Trophy” and features President Donald Trump as its honoree.
The gold-colored installation is the latest piece of protest art from the Secret Handshake, a group that has repeatedly used the nation’s front lawn to needle the president. This time, the message is delivered with the mock solemnity of a youth sports awards ceremony.
The Trophy’s Backhanded Message
Visitors stopping to examine the monument have found a lengthy inscription at its base. “We hereby award President Donald J. Trump this participation trophy for his enthusiastic involvement in the Iran war,” the plaque reads, congratulating Trump for showing up to the fight regardless of how things shook out. The inscription notes that while some people fixate on military strategy, diplomacy, or measurable outcomes, the president demonstrated the courage to participate no matter the final score. According to the inscription, Trump joins the ranks of children everywhere who received recognition for simply showing up.
Gayl Staver, one of the visitors who encountered the statue Monday morning near the King memorial, was uncertain how to interpret it.
A Growing Collection of Hardware
The collective did not stop at erecting the giant award. An accompanying plaque invites the public to join in, encouraging visitors to leave their own participation trophies for the president. Smaller trophies have been steadily accumulating around the base of the statue, turning the installation into a growing, crowdsourced shrine of shiny plastic hardware.
In a press release, the Secret Handshake framed the whole thing as an act of goodwill rather than provocation. The group told TIME the statue would remain on the Mall for the next several days and characterized it as an attempt to de-escalate tensions through encouragement rather than criticism. The trophy is meant to help wind down the ongoing conflict through what they called “positive reinforcement.”
The White House Fires Back
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly dismissed the piece and its creators in blunt terms, arguing that the artists should stay in their lane and leave geopolitics to others. Kelly added that they clearly know nothing about the subject given that the United States military achieved all of its objectives during Operation Epic Fury.
The reference to Operation Epic Fury underscores just how sharply the two sides see the same events. Where the White House points to a mission accomplished, the artists have erected a monument suggesting the scoreboard is beside the point.
Part of a Larger Campaign
The trophy is only the latest entry in the Secret Handshake’s roughly 18-month guerrilla-art campaign on and around the Mall, which the group says now numbers at least a dozen installations. Earlier pieces have skewered the president in increasingly baroque fashion: “Best Friends Forever,” a 2025 sculpture of Trump and the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein holding hands; “King of the World,” a nearly 12-foot, gold-painted tableau of the pair recreating the bow scene from “Titanic”; and “A Throne Fit for a King,” a 10-foot golden toilet lampooning Trump’s White House bathroom renovations. In May, the collective planted three working 1980s-style arcade games near the District of Columbia War Memorial — one offering players a choice between “order Diet Coke” and “invade Iran.” Like the participation trophy, each was built to be photographed, puzzled over and argued about, then hauled away within days.
The trophy stands as a lightning rod, and it has predictably lit up the president’s supporters, many of whom see it as a cheap shot dressed up as public art. Others passing by have treated it as a punchline worth photographing, then adding their own miniature trophy to the pile. The installation joins a running series of works by the Secret Handshake that take aim at the president, each one leaning on satire rather than slogans.
Whether the giant gold award truly de-escalates anything or simply escalates the argument over how to talk about the conflict, it has already succeeded at one thing: getting people to stop, read the fine print, and argue about what it all means. And with the group saying the piece will linger only a few more days, the clock is ticking for anyone hoping to see it — or add a trophy of their own — before it disappears from the Mall as quietly as it arrived.
