Jack White Calls Out Trump’s Miami Gold Statue as Another Chapter in the Cult of Loyalty

Jack White has weighed in on the new 22-foot golden statue of Donald Trump in Florida, and he framed it less as spectacle than as a symptom of what he sees as one of the ugliest habits in contemporary American life: insisting that something absurd can still be made to feel coherent.

The sculpture, which shows the US president with his fist raised in the air, echoes the gesture Trump made after the 2024 assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania. It was unveiled at Trump National Doral in Miami, where the ceremony was led by Evangelical pastor Mark Burns, a figure who has previously described Trump as divinely appointed, according to The Independent.

Burns draped the statue in white and blue fabric that recalled a Greek toga, then held his phone up to the microphone so attendees could hear a message from Trump himself. “I want to thank Mark Burns. He’s a good pastor, he’s a good man,” Trump said. “I’ve known him a long time, he’s been with me right from the beginning, maybe about two days later… I want to thank everybody there. I know it was done from love.”

The object itself was not improvised on the spot. Earlier this year, sculptor Alan Cottrill told The Times that he agreed to make the piece in bronze for $300,000 (£221,800), and that he was the one who suggested covering it in gold leaf. In his telling, the idea went down like offering water “to a person dying of thirst.”

White, predictably, was not interested in reading the whole thing as harmless pageantry. Sharing an image of the statue on Instagram, the White Stripes co-founder wrote: “The most frustrating part of modern American life is the attempt to make sense of people who don’t even CARE that they make no sense at all.”

There’s a theological edge to that remark that matters here. As Rolling Stone noted, White was raised Catholic and has long been attentive to Judeo-Christian language and symbolism, which makes his post feel like a pointed nod to the Bible’s warnings about false idols. Whether or not that’s the precise target, the implication is hard to miss: Trump is being treated not just as a political figure but as a figure worthy of ritualized devotion.

Burns, for his part, quickly rejected the idea that the statue was any kind of golden calf. On X/Twitter, he wrote: “Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf. This statue is a celebration of life. It is a symbol of resilience, freedom, patriotism, strength, and the will power to keep fighting for the future of America.” He later posted that “history was made” at Trump National Doral Miami and described the unveiling as “far more than a ribbon cutting.”

It is also far from the first Trump statue to materialize and then disappear in the Trump era. Two of the more notorious examples were Best Friends Forever, which pictured Trump with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and King Of The World, which placed the pair in the famous Titanic pose. Both came from the protest group Secret Handshake and were removed soon after being installed, according to The Independent.

White’s comments fit into a pattern that has become almost its own running commentary on Trump-era spectacle. He has repeatedly attacked the president in recent years, including over a meme portraying Trump as Jesus Christ and after Trump aimed verbal attacks at Pope Leo. “How can any so-called Christian support him after this blasphemy? How could any Catholic support him after he attacks the character of their Pope multiple times? How did so many millions of people fall for this conman?” White wrote. “He’s already got worst President in the history of America on lock, but I’m gonna go ahead and take the honour of pronouncing Trump ‘Worst American of All Time.’”

He has also criticized Trump over the US military campaign in Iran and mocked his role as leader of the Board of Peace. Earlier, White called for Trump to be removed from office after a racist meme was shared on Truth Social depicting Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes. In January, he mocked Trump’s rambling anniversary press conference and was among the celebrities who condemned the president after comments about the death of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle. He has also taken aim at the Treasury Department’s plans to put Trump’s signature on all new US paper currency, calling him a “manipulative, loophole finding, egomaniacal, conman.”