A gold-leafed statue of Donald Trump is now standing at his Trump National Doral golf club in Miami after a drawn-out payment dispute.
The 15-foot bronze sculpture, which rises to about 22 feet with its pedestal, was finished with gold leaf after the artist, Ohio-based sculptor Alan Cottrill, proposed the upgrade to Trump’s team. “It [was] like pitching ice water to a man dying of thirst,” Cottrill told the Daily Beast.
The addition helped push the cost of the project, commissioned by a group of cryptocurrency investors to promote their $PATRIOT meme coin, from $300,000 to $360,000. Cottrill also demanded compensation for the group’s use of images of the statue to market the token before his payment had been finalized, which he called copyright infringement.
The two sides eventually agreed on an additional fee for that use, the artist said, but the payments stopped when he was still owed approximately $90,000 for the balance of the usage fee plus additional costs. Cottrill then refused to release the statue, keeping it in an undisclosed location until he was paid in full.
The standoff was only resolved late last month with a wire transfer of $96,750 to Cottrill, and the statue was finally delivered and installed at the course.
The statue—nicknamed “Don Colossus”—depicts Trump with his fist raised, echoing a gesture he made after a 2024 assassination attempt. It was installed just ahead of a PGA Tour event at the course, where it quickly became a talking point among players and spectators.
The statue has also drawn wider attention online, with some critics comparing its scale, pose, and gold finish to monuments associated with authoritarian leaders, including North Korea’s Kim Il Sung, while supporters have praised it as a tribute.
