A vandal has hit President Trump’s Hollywood Walk of Fame star once again, this time with a coffin blaming him for excess coronavirus deaths.
Installed Thursday, the white coffin from Plastic Jesus was labeled the “USA Freedom Box” to highlight how the anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandate protests have led to mass deaths.
“On the side it’s got the ‘USA Freedom Box,'” Plastic Jesus said in an interview posted to Twitter. “It’s really kind of a blow at the people saying vaccines and masks are impeding their freedoms. Once you’re dead and you’re in a coffin, you don’t have any worries about losing freedoms.”
“I wanted to do something because the anti-mask, anti-vaccine, anti-science mob has become so vocal,” he added.
The latest hit at President Trump’s Hollywood star is just another act of vandalism in a string of incidences that have been ongoing since the 2016 election.
In 2017, an unidentified assailant used a black marker to write “Fuck Trump” on the president’s star. Months later, another vandal placed a golden toilet beside the landmark that invited pedestrians to “take a Trump.” In late 2016, as the election loomed closer, a vandal named James Otis destroyed the star almost completely with the swing of a pick-ax; the 53-year-old was later tried and ordered to pay $700 to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and another $3,700 to the Hollywood Historic Trust.
In September 2018, Plastic Jesus himself placed a set of metal bars over the star, which he claimed represented the jail cell Trump’s critics have been calling for since the day of his election.
“There have been calls to jail Trump since the day he was elected, and today he was certainly put behind bars,” Plastic Jesus wrote in an email to HuffPost.
“Although it was very quickly damaged by a Trump supporter trying to remove it the bars did appear to be stuck fast and were there several hours later ― to the amusement of thousands of passing tourists,” he added.
The bars were made with instant-drying “industrial-strength double-sided sticky tape” so that they could be hinged to the ground long enough without him being fined thousands of dollars to repair the star, an act of “protest art.” During the height of the 2016 election, Plastic Jesus similarly lampooned Trump’s proposed border wall by erecting his own border wall around the star.
As noted by The Hill, the vandalism became so frequent that the “West Hollywood City Council approved a proposal urging the Los Angeles City Council and Hollywood Chamber of Commerce to remove Trump’s star from the Walk of Fame.” The move was subsequently turned down by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.
Rana Ghadban, the president and CEO of the Chamber, told The Hill that the Hollywood Walk of Fame is an “institution celebrating the positive contributions of the inductees.”
“When people are unhappy with one of our honorees, we would hope that they would project their anger in more positive ways than to vandalize a California State landmark,” she said. “Our democracy is based on respect for the law. People can make a difference by voting and not destroying public property.”
Ghadban said that the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce will prosecute vandals with the fullest extent of the law.
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