A left-wing invitation put an eight-foot gilded naked caricature of President Trump on display at the European Parliament, drawing sharp rebuke from a fellow lawmaker who called the stunt a disgrace.
The temporary statue, titled “The Orange Plague,” went up Tuesday on a major thoroughfare linking European Parliament offices in Strasbourg, France, and was set for removal Thursday.
Danish artist Jens Galschiot created the work and unveiled it after a left-wing lawmaker invited the piece onto the grounds. The figure shows a naked Donald Trump holding a golf club and the scales of justice while riding on another man’s shoulders. It stands about eight feet tall and is covered in gold leaf.
Breitbart News reported the installation and the political fight that followed inside the Parliament complex.
Galschiot did not hide his message. At the unveiling he cast the U.S. president as a danger to the international system he prefers.
The artist said:
“Trump represents one of the greatest threats to the rules-based world order, democratic values and our common effort to solving the climate crisis”
That is the stated motive. The statue is political theater dressed up as sculpture, placed where lawmakers and staff walk every day.
The same work appeared earlier in bronze, before the gold leaf, on the fringes of the Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2026. Organizers of the Strasbourg stop turned it into a short road show. The Daily Telegraph reported that visitors were to receive small maquettes of the statue as keepsakes.
Eco-socialist MEP Per Clausen defended the display. He said President Trump should take the caricature on the chin and labeled him “thin skinned” if he objected.
Clausen’s line treats official mockery of a sitting American president as fair sport. The European Parliament hosts the president of a major ally’s likeness in a degrading pose, then scolds anyone who notices the insult.
Flemish nationalist MEP Barbara Bonte of Vlaams Belang rejected the whole exercise. She posted a blunt assessment on X and refused to pretend the statue was harmless art.
Bonte wrote:
“What a disgrace. A gold-plated, naked Donald Trump... The people who lecture the world on dignity can’t even manage basic respect for the president of a friendly nation.”
She also described the political statement made “under the guise of art” as disgraceful. Her point is straightforward. Officials who moralize about respect and democratic norms staged a crude public slight against the elected leader of the United States.
The invitation came from a left-wing lawmaker. The statue sat in a busy corridor of a body that claims to speak for European values. No formal institutional vote or leadership endorsement is detailed beyond that invitation and the short display window.
Installation on Tuesday. Removal on Thursday. The schedule kept the piece temporary while still guaranteeing foot traffic and photographs. Galschiot’s prior Munich outing shows the work was already touring European security and political venues before it received the gold finish and the Strasbourg placement.
Nothing in the available record shows a response from Trump, the U.S. government, or European Parliament leadership. The fight on record is internal: Clausen waving off the insult, Bonte naming it, and the artist declaring Trump a threat to climate policy and the “rules-based” order.
European institutions spend considerable time instructing others on dignity, norms, and respect among democratic partners. Putting a naked, gold-covered caricature of the American president in a Parliament hallway is a concrete test of whether those lectures apply when the target is a conservative U.S. leader they dislike.
When elite forums treat an ally’s president as a carnival prop, voters can see exactly how much the dignity talk is worth.
