Alan Cottrill, an artist from Ohio, spent months crafting 3.1 tons of bronze into a singular vision of power. The result is "Don Colossus," a 15-foot-tall statue of Donald Trump coated in $60,000 worth of gold leaf. It now stands atop a seven-foot pedestal at the Trump National Doral Miami, positioned to catch the South Florida light during this week’s PGA Tour Cadillac Championship. The statue is positioned overlooking the resort’s golf courses, where its gold-leaf surface "interacts dynamically" with the sun, according to the sculptor.

New documents obtained by the New York Times show the planned "National Garden of American Heroes" is also growing in both size and cost. The latest renderings feature reflecting pools, an amphitheater, and 250 life-size statues of famous Americans. It is a neoclassical flex that critics have compared to the monumental style of North Korean leaders, marking a massive remake of the nation's capital in the President's own image.

"Trump seemed to revel in the visit," observers noted as he welcomed King Charles III this week. The golden monument in Miami is the ultimate Veblen good—a massive, unmissable marker of status that demands to be seen by the world leaders arriving for the upcoming G20 summit. For the elite arriving in private jets, the statue serves as a shimmering welcome to the new American aesthetic.

Read together, these projects signal a president remaking the American landscape in his own image; the connection between personal golf course vanity and national memorial policy is purely stylistic in this paper's view, though both represent a significant escalation in the cost of monumentalism.