PHILADELPHIA — A large golden-colored statue of former President Donald Trump with his right hand held out in a crude gesture appeared behind the Maja statue at Maja Park on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway Wednesday morning.

While the work was not signed and no artist immediately took credit, a similar statue appeared in Portland, Ore., Sunday and was also placed near a statue of a nude woman.

The plaque at the base of the statue was titled “In honor of a lifetime of sexual assault.” It read: “I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”

The quote is from Trump’s 2005 interview with Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush , but his words were not meant to air.

The Trump statue was removed by city workers just as quickly and quietly as it appeared in the park. It was put in the back of a pickup truck shortly before noon.

The Maja statue by Gerhard Marcks, which depicts a nude woman with her eyes closed and hands resting on top of her head, was first exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1949 and was installed on the museum’s east terrace from 1954-1992. It was then placed in storage until it was reinstalled in its new home in Maja Park in 2021.

Marcks, a German, was labeled “a degenerate artist” by Nazis, who destroyed many of his works, according to the Association for Public Art, which owns the sculpture.

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