The sculptor behind a colossal bronze statue of Donald Trump has revealed how pitching an additional $60,000 for gold-leafing to the White House was an "easy sell." Alan Cottrill, an Ohio-based artist, created the 15-foot-tall statue, which currently stands at the president's golf club in Miami and cost more than $400,000.
Cottrill was commissioned by the team behind the cryptocurrency $PATRIOT to create the statue for roughly $300,000. He later came up with the idea of covering it in gold, a signature of the president. During a call with two White House representatives, two people from the crypto team, Pastor Mark Burns, and two representatives from Trump National Doral Golf Club, he pitched the proposal. "They loved the idea, of course. It's like pitching ice water to a man dying of thirst. It was not a hard sell," he told The Daily Beast.
The president's affinity for gold is well documented. Since returning to the White House, he has introduced gold accents to the Oval Office, from furniture to lamps and picture frames. A new "Presidential Walk of Fame" along the West Wing colonnade features portraits of former presidents in gold frames, and the administration has launched "Trump Gold Cards," an exclusive visa for wealthy investors. Burns, sometimes described as the president's informal spiritual adviser, is credited with helping make the gold-leafing possible by connecting Trump to the statue's backers. According to a message cited in reports, Trump wrote to Burns in December: "IT LOOKS FANTASTIC."
The $PATRIOT memecoin team conceived the statue after Trump survived an assassination attempt in 2024, drawing inspiration from the image of a bloodied president pumping his fist after being rushed by Secret Service agents. The statue was initially scheduled to be unveiled at Trump's second inauguration in January 2025, but complications delayed it. A dispute arose between Cottrill and the crypto team over the use of an image of the statue to launch the coin. "The crypto boys used the image of my statue to launch their token, and that's a copyright infringement," the 73-year-old sculptor said.
Cottrill eventually reached an agreement with the crypto team, which paid an additional $90,000, bringing the total cost of the statue to $450,000. While the White House and Trump himself were aware of the statue's construction, the Trump Organization has taken no part in the creation of the associated memecoin. The statue, nicknamed "Don Colossus," remains on display at the Doral golf club.
