On Wednesday at Trump National Doral in Miami, a circle of evangelical clergy bowed their heads at the base of a 22-foot golden statue of President Donald Trump. They prayed over it. They blessed it. Pastor Mark Burns, the president’s informal spiritual adviser, held his phone to the microphone so Trump could call in and thank everyone personally.
Then Burns took to X and said something no one had asked him to clarify.
“Let me be clear,” he wrote. “This is not a golden calf. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone.”
Nobody had called it a golden calf. Not yet.
NEW: MAGA evangelical leaders gather in Mar-a-Lago to bless and dedicate a gold statue dedicate to Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/D3HcomQIu3
— Christopher Hale (@ChristopherHale) May 8, 2026
The grift wrapped in gold leaf
The statue was not commissioned by the government or the Republican Party. It was financed by a group of cryptocurrency investors promoting a meme coin called $PATRIOT. They paid sculptor Alan Cottrill $300,000 for the bronze figure, $60,000 to wrap it in gold leaf, and $150,000 for the rights to use the statue’s image to market their token. Before Cottrill had even been paid in full, the group was already using images of his work to promote the coin online. He sued them for copyright infringement. The prayer circle, the clergy, the blessing, the phone call from the president of the United States. All of it, for a crypto promotion.
In February, Eric Trump posted on X that the Trump Organization had “no association of any kind” with the $PATRIOT coin. Three months later, the statue it funded was installed on his father’s golf course, blessed by his father’s pastor, and celebrated with a phone call from the president himself. Trump posted a photo on Truth Social the following day. “The Real Deal — GOLD,” he wrote. “Put there by great American Patriots!!!”
The statue is bronze. The great American patriots are meme coin investors. And the Trump Organization would like everyone to know it has nothing to do with any of this.
The TV show that couldn’t make this up
The same week Burns was dedicating a golden Trump statue in Florida, Amazon’s The Boys aired an episode in which the character Homelander, a superhero built entirely around authoritarian impulse wrapped in patriotic pageantry, receives his own golden statue. Side-by-side, the images are nearly identical. The show meant it as satire. The ceremony at Doral came with a prayer circle.
Eric Kripke, the show’s creator, posted both images on Instagram. His only comment: “Seriously what the fuck?”
“It’s just really hard to out-satire this world,” Kripke told Polygon.
The denial that proved the point
One of the greatest honors of my life was leading the dedication of President Donald J. Trump’s statue to the world.
What amazes me is how quickly some people have compared this beautiful statue, created and made possible by more than 6,000 patriots, to a golden calf or idol… pic.twitter.com/p8myp46dD5
— Pastor Mark Burns (@pastormarkburns) May 8, 2026
Burns described the ceremony as “far more than a ribbon cutting” and called the statue a symbol of “resilience, freedom, patriotism, courage, and the will to keep fighting for America.” He said it “reminds us of the hand of God over President Trump’s life.”
He also needed to say it twice across two platforms.
“What amazes me,” Burns later wrote on Instagram, “is how quickly some people have compared this beautiful statue to a golden calf or idol worship.” He followed that with: “But you are in gross error if you think for one second that I worship this magnificent statue or anything made by human hands.”
A widely shared Threads post put it simply: it is not a golden calf, the user wrote. It is a golden statue of a man they idolize, believe can do no wrong, and follow without question. Totally different.
Step back far enough and the picture is not subtle. Cryptocurrency investors commission a bronze Trump statue, wrap it in gold leaf, install it at his private golf course, use it to promote a meme coin, and surround it with clergy who insist the spectacle has nothing to do with worship.
The Book of Exodus says the Israelites took their gold, fashioned a calf, and worshipped it while Moses was on the mountain. When he came down and saw what they had built, he burned it, ground it to powder, and made them drink it.
No one at Doral brought up that part.