Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame has, over the years, been smashed with a pickax, placed behind bars, surrounded by a small, symbolic wall, and spray-painted with a hurricane of expletives. It’s almost like people are trying to say something about the guy, you know? Hm. One wonders why.
Over the weekend, as thousands of protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest the killing of George Floyd and police brutality as a whole—while Trump holed up in a bunker—some mysterious, enterprising folks made a beeline straight for the star, spray-painting it entirely black and adding “BLM”—Black Lives Matter—alongside it. As an extra garnish, a green bag filled with feces was also left on top of the star. Protesters marching through Hollywood were quick to share photos of the defaced star, with TMZ later sharing a video of the newly decorated sidewalk monument.
According to Variety, the star has already been cleaned up. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, which administers the Walk of Fame, has not commented on the defacing…but they’ve got to be a little bit tired of this, right? Trump’s star, which was awarded to him in 2007, has been vandalized numerous times since he started gaining steam in the 2016 presidential race. Local politicians have called for the star to be permanently removed from the Walk of Fame, but the chamber is notoriously bullish about star removal; Bill Cosby, for example, still has a star as a result of the chamber’s hardened stance that the Walk of Fame is a historic landmark and, thus, all stars are necessary, protected historic markers.
Of course, what this really means is that Trump’s star will just continue to be defaced at every given opportunity. Over the past few years, it’s been graffitied to hell and back; when it was boarded down and covered with a plank of wood, that wood was then tagged with spray-painted expletives like “Fuck Trump.” On at least two separate occasions, the star was physically destroyed; it was smashed with a sledgehammer in 2016, and with a pickax in 2018.
Some folks have gotten slightly more creative with their vandalism. In 2016, street artist Plastic Jesus erected a tiny border wall around the star, mocking Trump’s xenophobic “Build that wall” rhetoric. Someone also placed a golden toilet, which bore the message “Take a Trump,” next to the statue in 2017. What will they think of next?
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— “Can We Live?” The Daughter of Civil Rights Activists on the Question That’s Haunted Her for Decades
— Catherine O’Hara, Queen of Schitt’s Creek, Talks Gilda Radner Friendship & More
— Exclusive: Stephen King’s The Stand Comes to Life Again
— Jeffrey Epstein: Seven Remaining Mysteries—And Disturbing Revelations
— Old Hollywood’s Most Scandalous Secrets, as Told by David Niven
— Trevor Noah and The Daily Show Aren’t Just Surviving—They’re Thriving
— From the Archive: Sidney Poitier’s Pointed Message to White America as Race Riots Swept the Nation in the Summer of 1967
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story.