Donald Trump has long obsessed over crowd sizes, lighting, camera angles, and portraits. Pretty much anything that makes him look thinner, richer, or younger than he is.

Critics have also mocked what they see as his fear of aging and even falling on camera.

That obsession may have followed him into the creation of his new towering gold statue. Now the sculptor behind the massive monument has ripped the lid off what he describes as a chaotic, ego-driven process.

Trump’s giant gold statue is getting roasted after the sculptor revealed backers allegedly demanded he look thinner and less wrinkled under his neck before the unveiling. (Photo by Kent Nishimura / AFP via Getty Images)

According to The Miami New Times, the controversy exploded after “Don Colossus,” a 22-foot gold-leaf Trump statue, was unveiled on May 6 at Trump National Doral in Miami.

Trump chose to skip the bizarre ceremony involving crypto investors and pastors, but gave a cellphone speech instead.

“I want to thank Mark Burns, a pastor, he’s a good pastor, he’s a good man,” Trump said. “I’ve known him a long time, he’s been with me from the beginning, right from the beginning. Maybe about two days later.”

“I want to thank everybody there,” he added. “I know it was done from love.”

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The statue depicts Trump throwing his fist into the air after surviving the July 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania. But according to Ohio sculptor Alan Cottrill, the people financing the statue weren’t satisfied with realism.

“I had him even skinnier than he is,” Cottrill admitted while describing the first clay model.

Cottrill claims backers allegedly still thought the president looked “too big.” He was specifically told to slim down the area beneath Trump’s chin.

“I’m close enough to his age, and I got some turkey neck going on, and I knew what that was. That’s what happens when you’re almost 80,” he said.

The sculptor explained that the project became less about preserving history and more about creating a MAGA version of an Instagram filter. “From the start, this was chaos,” Cottrill admitted. 

So when Cottrill revealed that statue investors were obsessed with slimming that same area, The Independent readers connected the dots immediately.

“It’s Trump Man…40 years younger and 210 lbs lighter,” one reader joked. A Facebook user noted, “They used a slimmed down version.”

A third person was more shocked, pointing to the white and blue fabric draped over the statue before the unveiling. “It looks like someone’s TP’d it already!” said one person, while another blasted, “OMG! You couldn’t make this up.”

The mockery only intensified during the unveiling ceremony led by one of Trump’s most outspoken evangelical allies. Pastor Mark Burns felt compelled to address what was already on everyone’s mind.

“Let me be clear: this is not a golden calf,” Burns declared dramatically.

The internet was unmoved. “Some pastor he is, can’t even recognize a golden calf when he sees it,” one reader fired back.

Someone else quipped, “Soooo embarrassing. Talk about making a fool of yourself.”

“You have to laugh at these ‘pastors’ he brings in. Sellers of snake-oil, just like himself,” another commenter added. One person simply joked, “Next step will be to replace the Statue of Liberty with a massive gold Trump statue.”

Meanwhile, Cottrill sounds exhausted. He said the crypto-funded commission became the most chaotic project of his career — late payments, nonstop revisions, and last-minute installation demands. At one point, he reportedly hid the statue in an undisclosed location until investors paid what they owed.

Cottrill claims at the beginning of the year that he had been dealing with payment issues. The project’s initial timeline was in late 2024 and early 2025. Still, he completed the work on a grueling “seven days a week” schedule to meet a projected January 2025 unveiling. But when he did not get paid, he stalled.

The statue was meant to immortalize Trump as a fearless political warrior. Instead, the internet walked away talking about one man’s desperate war against neck wrinkles and bad camera angles.

This wasn’t the first time Trump’s neck sensitivity made headlines.

Back in 2025, Trump publicly had a meltdown over a Time magazine cover he believed made him look terrible. He complained on Truth Social that the image captured him at a low angle and highlighted the sagging skin beneath his chin.

“Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time,” Trump wrote.

He blasted the publication for the edits, creating what he described as a strange “floating crown” effect above his head.

Specifically about the “angle,” Trump said, “I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture.” He conveniently avoided directly naming the neck issue while making it painfully clear what bothers him about his own appearance.

‘OMG You Couldn’t Make This Up’: Trump Blasted By Sculptor Over His Ego-Driven Demand to Shrink One Brutal Detail Before the Final Reveal