And Then They Came for Melania: First Lady Statue Set on Fire Near Her Hometown

Tommy ChristopherJul 9th, 2020, 8:53 am
 

Jure Makovec/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump has made protecting Confederate statues into a campaign issue, but that didn’t prevent vandals from burning a likeness of First Lady Melania Trump near her hometown in Slovenia.

The wooden statue of Mrs. Trump was unveiled in a field near the town of Sevnica, Slovenia on July 5, 2019, but wound up having a considerably shorter run than the monuments Trump is now trying to protect. According to Reuters, it was set on fire on July 4 of this year, exactly one day short of a year after its unveiling:

A wooden sculpture of U.S. first lady Melania Trump was torched near her hometown of Sevnica, Slovenia, on the night of July Fourth, as Americans celebrated U.S. Independence Day, said the artist who commissioned the sculpture.

Brad Downey, a Berlin-based American artist, told Reuters he had the life-sized blackened, disfigured sculpture removed as soon as police informed him on July 5th of the incident.

“I want to know why they did it,” said Downey, who had hoped the statue would foster a dialogue about the political situation in the United States, highlighting Melania Trump’s status as an immigrant married to a president sworn to reduce immigration.

The Office if the First Lady did not furnish Reuters with a comment on the story.

This isn’t even the first statue of a Trump to be burned in Slovenia. In January of this year, a 26-foot wooden sculpture satirizing President Trump was torched just a few months after it was unveiled.

Trump has consistently defended symbols of the Confederacy, but has stepped up his messaging in the wake of nationwide protests following the police killing of George Floyd. Most recently, he attacked NASCAR’s only Black driver, Bubba Wallace, and slammed the organization’s decision to ban the Confederate flag.

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