TrumpRat

By John Post Lee

The Lancet — peer-reviewed, 200 years old, projects that Trump’s USAID cuts will produce 14 million deaths by 2030. 1.7 million this year. Mostly children. Mostly Africa. Preventable.

Hitler: 11 million. Stalin: 7 million. Cambodia: 2 million. Rwanda: 800,000.

Consequences of Trump’s budget cut: 14 million deaths.

Do the math. This isn’t hyperbole. This isn’t a metaphor. This is a maniac sadist sociopath who was shown the projections, and understood the implications. In the Hague, this is what is known as a crime against humanity. Extermination. For Trump it’s a line item, a news cycle.

The 20th century’s greatest killers needed armies. Trump needed a pen and a country that would rather putz around about in the culture wars than give a shit about 14 million corpses in Africa.

“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”
― Hannah Arendt

TRUMPRAT

CASTIGAT RIDENDO MORES

and a call to re-engage in civic protest

TrumpRat

“We fight fire with satire.”

TrumpRat is a large-scale inflatable sculpture inspired by the ‘strike rats’ unions place along picket lines.

It is a portable, mobile symbol of resistance: humorous, direct, and impossible to ignore.

WHY TRUMPRAT?

TrumpRat is derived from the inflatable ‘strike rats’ (often called ‘Scabby the Rat’) that unions install along picket lines. Like those rats, this work is designed to be seen from far away—a blunt, theatrical warning that something is wrong and that people have gathered to say so. In our view, much of today’s right-wing political project can be summarized as a transfer of rights upward: weakening labor, deregulating the commons, privatizing the public, and turning fear into policy. TrumpRat responds with a single, legible image—one that turns spectacle back on power.

A RAT AS METAPHOR

Rats are a charged symbol in the civic imagination. They are feared as vermin; they are associated with contagion, opportunism, and the instinct to flee when the ship begins to sink. In cities, they live in the shadows—under the subway, behind the walls—thriving where neglect and corruption accumulate. TrumpRat uses that symbolism as a metaphor for political behavior we refuse to normalize: scapegoating, cruelty dressed as toughness, and the performance of dominance at the expense of truth, empathy, and equal protection under the law.

WE FIGHT FIRE WITH SATIRE

TrumpRat is not a gesture of simple ridicule or a comeuppance. Its higher calling is classic satire—art imitating life in order to reveal it. Satire interrupts the spell of inevitability. It makes people look twice. It gives a crowd a common language, and it exposes the soft underbelly of authoritarian posturing: the need to be taken seriously. This is a work in the tradition of psychological portraiture. It asks a question that is both aesthetic and civic: what happens when public life is governed by humiliation—when ridicule becomes communication, decision-making, and policy?

WHAT WE STAND FOR

• Compassion and equality as civic obligations—not optional virtues.

• A democracy measured by how it treats people with the least power.

• Workers’ rights, voting rights, reproductive freedom, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial justice as non-negotiable and scaling back America as the shining military industrial complex on the hill.

• A free press, independent courts, and peaceful transfer of power as the bedrock—not the bargaining chips—of the republic and the complete separation of church and State

• Truth over spectacle: disagreement without dehumanization. (Except unless the dehumanization is as amusing like TrumpRat).

A CALL TO RE-ENGAGE

If you feel exhausted by the news cycle, that exhaustion is not an accident—it is a strategy. Cynicism is the easiest form of social control. TrumpRat is a reminder that politics is not only what happens in distant buildings; it is what happens in streets, schools, workplaces, union halls, houses of worship, and neighborhood associations.

Public protest is not a hobby (except for me). It is a democratic muscle. When we stop using it, it atrophies.

TRUMPRAT INSTRUCTION MANUAL

TrumpRat belongs in public space because it is made for public space. If you deploy it, let it do the job art can do better than slogans: draw attention, create a focal point, and invite conversation and confrontation. Use it to gather people—then give them something to do.

1. Show up: attend local meetings, hearings, school board sessions, and protests.

2. Bring two people: activism is contagious when it is social.

3. Support labor and small business, donate, volunteer, and amplify worker-led campaigns.

4. Protect the vote: register, canvass, drive neighbors to the polls, and fight suppression.

5. Make it sustainable: rotate roles, share credit, and take care of each other.

Always keep protests lawful and nonviolent. The goal is not chaos—it is solidarity, visibility, and pressure for accountable government. ALWAYS CARRY THE BUSINESS CARD OF YOUR LOCAL COMMUNITY AFFAIRS OFFICER AND SHOW IT TO COPS INTENDING TO VIOLATE YOUR RIGHTS OR BREAK LAWS. HAVE THE DETECTIVE ON YOUR SPEED DIAL.

PHILADELPHIA: TWO RATS, SAME STINKIN’ CHEESE

Text adapted from the Philadelphia appearance on the occasion of former Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo. My name is John Post Lee. I grew up in Philadelphia. I am the co-founder of a New York City-based gallery and the co-creator of TrumpRat, an inflatable likeness inspired by the ‘strike rats’ unions place along picket lines. The idea that Philadelphia ever erected a statue of Frank Rizzo—mayor from 1972 to 1980—is astonishing. Rizzo’s legacy is inseparable from police brutality and a politics of intimidation. Public sculpture is not history; it is cultural memory. And cultural memory can sanitize what communities have actually lived. TrumpRat arrived in Philadelphia to stage a symbolic conversation with that legacy: a confrontation between two styles of political theater that treat humiliation and force as civic virtues. The inflatable began as a mischievous art project. It has become an enduring sign of resistance against policies that target the vulnerable and reward the powerful.

CREDITS

Conceived by John Post Lee Concept art: Jeffrey Beebe & John Post Lee (partially funded by Kickstarter) Unique sculpture: 1/1 with 1 Publisher’s Proof (unrealized)

SELECTED PRESS AND PUBLICATIONS

• Miami Chronicles

• Miami New Times

• Art News

• The Inquirer (Philadelphia)

• Philly Magazine

• The Washington Post

• The Hill

• USA Today

• Time

• New York Daily News

• Gothamist

• NY1

• amNewYork

• Architectural Digest

• Vogue

• Hyperallergic

• Artforum

• Boing Boing (Cory Doctorow)

• AV Club

• Gayletter

• Consequence of Sound

SELECTED EXHIBITION HISTORY

• TrumpRat at 59th and Fifth Avenue, NYC (debut)

• Trump SoHo Hotel

• Featured guest of RuPaul’s DragCon

• Brooklyn Museum

• West 72nd Street, multiple appearances

• Philadelphia, PA (across from the Rizzo statue, near City Hall)

• Grand Army Plaza, Manhattan, NYC

• Columbus Circle, multiple appearances

• Fox News NYC, multiple appearances

• American Museum of Natural History entrance (uninvited)

• Washington Square, NYC

• Times Square, NYC

• Jones Day (entrance to law firm representing Trump)

• National Mall, Washington, DC

• In front of the White House, Constitution Avenue

• Satellite Art Fair, Miami

• Satellite at Club Brooklyn

• Black Lives Matter Plaza, 16th Street NW, DC

• Jeffrey Deitch Gallery

• Miami Basel, multiple locations

TrumpRat facing Trump International Hotel, Central Park West, NYC

Thanks to Carol Benovic-Bradley at Kickstarter and our Kickstarter backers. Invaluable assistance and advice from Chris Dunn at the NYCLU. Special thanks to Andrew “The Fixer” Celli at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff and Abady LLP, George Day, and many others.