WASHINGTON — There's a propaganda war playing out on the National Mall between the Trump administration and its critics. The administration has hung giant banners bearing President Trump's face from several federal buildings. His name now adorns both the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the United States Institute of Peace.
Meanwhile, an anonymous group called the Secret Handshake has put up satirical statues of Trump and artworks that emphasize everything from the president's friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to Trump's taste for marble and gold leaf.
Another group, the Save America Movement, has plastered posters on fences and walls mocking members of Trump's Cabinet. One shows a photo of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and says, "Fascism Ain't Pretty." Another shows Attorney General Pam Bondi and reads, "Epstein Queen."
"We think that ridicule is a really important tool in an opposition toolbox to fight authoritarianism," said Mary Corcoran, who runs the Save America Movement, a nonprofit.
Corcoran adds that she doesn't see this as a fair fight "because they're using taxpayer dollars to fund their propaganda, and we're not."
The White House rejects criticisms that the president is recasting the National Mall in his own image and using federal buildings for self-aggrandizement.
"President Trump is focused on saving our country — not garnering recognition," White House spokesman Davis Ingle told NPR by email. "A variety of organizations are free to share their opinions publicly, even when they lack any basis in reality."
The National Mall is known as America's front yard, and includes monuments and museums designed to unify the nation and celebrate democracy.
Last month, a gold-painted statue depicting Trump holding Epstein's outstretched arms on the prow of a ship as though they were Jack and Rose on the Titanic drew a steady stream of people who laughed and posed in front of it for photos.
Not everyone was amused.
"It's a gross interpretation of our president," said Andi Lynn Helmy, a high school senior from Jacksonville, Fla. "Even if you don't agree with his policies ... I think it's just an incredibly disrespectful thing."
Other visitors took exception to the president's face staring down from those banners on the Department of Labor, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Justice. They likened it to the images of personalized rule seen in the People's Republic of China during the Chairman Mao Tse-Tung era and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
"I just feel like he's sort of painting himself as the king of America," said Luke Price, a freshman at the University of Vermont. "I just don't think that's what we're about. America is a democracy, not a dictatorship."
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