Washington has plenty of monuments built for wars that actually finished. Monday’s addition wasn’t one of them, honoring instead a war still underway and the one man convinced it’s already done.
A 10-foot gold trophy appeared near the corner of Independence Avenue and West Basin Drive, just south of the MLK Jr. Memorial bookstore, engraved with a plaque that reads: “We hereby award President Donald J. Trump this participation trophy for his enthusiastic involvement in the Iran War. While some concern themselves with military strategy, diplomacy, or measurable outcomes, President Trump demonstrated the courage to participate regardless of the final score. As the recipient of this prestigious award, President Trump joins the ranks of children everywhere who received recognition for simply showing up.”
Behind it is Secret Handshake, the same guerrilla art collective that’s been quietly turning the National Mall into an anti-Trump sculpture garden for over a year.
NEWS: A 10 foot tall participation trophy has been placed on the National Mall in honor of Donald Trump’s “enthusiastic involvement” in the Iran war.
A group called Secret Handshake is taking credit. pic.twitter.com/EtagBVTEWH
— Aaron Parnas (@AaronParnas) July 13, 2026
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A spokesperson told the Daily Beast the trophy doubles as a functioning collection point, officially the “Donald Trump Trophy Donation Center,” where visitors can drop off their own old medals and ribbons for Trump to claim.
The logic behind it was pretty straightforward: “Together, we hope that if enough trophies are donated, he will be perceived as a winner and not feel the need to bomb other countries.” That’s less of a joke than it sounds once you consider the year Trump’s actually had, spending months openly lobbying for a Nobel Peace Prize and crediting himself with ending somewhere between 8 and 10 wars depending on which speech you catch.
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, the actual 2025 Nobel Peace Prize winner, handed Trump her own medal, and he took it without a second thought.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino went a step further and invented an entirely new “FIFA Peace Prize” for the sole purpose of giving it to Trump at the World Cup Final Draw ceremony. Stack all that up, and a homemade trophy asking strangers to mail in their old bowling league medals barely counts as satire anymore.
Secret Handshake’s track record around the capital has been building toward this for a while.
In May, the group installed three working arcade cabinets at the D.C. War Memorial, built around what they called “furious tweet battles against Iranian schoolgirls, low-flow shower heads, and other threats to American freedom like DEI and The Pope, and an opportunity to collect several Trump style peace trophies.”
Their statement at the time included a line that doubled as a review of the entire war effort: “Just to save you time, the only way you can lose is by trying to hold Melania’s hand. But it’s The Middle East, so you also can’t win either.” Earlier installations from the same group include a golden statue of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein and a gilded throne complete with a matching toilet, both parked on the same section of Mall real estate.
Featured image via X screengrab
