Neighborhoods Staten Island Trump Sculpture Now Back and Bigger Than Ever
by Max Rivlin-Nadler
On Monday, we brought you the story of Sam Pirozzolo, the Staten Island man whose giant T tribute to Donald Trump caught fire early Sunday morning. Pirozzolo has told reporters that it was set ablaze by ne’er-do-well Trump haters who scaled a fence on Staten Island to douse his sign in gasoline. The police have yet to locate said arsonist(s), so at the moment, we’ll take his word for it.
Regardless, Pirozzolo and the original T artist, Scott LoBaido, have made good on their promise to replace the sculpture with an even larger T, as Pirozzolo’s Facebook has been updated to show an un-singed, and quite gigantic, T on his front lawn. LoBaido had told the Voice that he believed the new work would be at least sixteen feet by twelve feet, although we haven’t yet gone out to measure.
On top of that, Pirozzolo claims that Donald Trump himself called the Staten Island conservative to check in on him following what Pirozzolo considers a “hate crime.” Writing on his Facebook wall on Monday, Pirozzolo says that, “I just got off the phone with the next president of the United States Donald Trump. He called to see if we were OK and to say thank you! Scott and I told him we were putting up another T tomorrow and he said, Really, that’s great.”
Pirozzolo and LoBaido have been making the rounds on conservative media as well, appearing on Fox News and Sean Hannity’s radio show.
On Facebook, Pirozzolo thanked supporters for coming out as they unveiled the new T on Tuesday night: “On behalf of my family we say thank you, God bless you and may God continue to bless America. Vote Trump!”
As Gothamist points out, the artist, LoBaido, has a long history of conservative performance art, including an arrest in 2003 for painting an American flag on the side of the French Consulate in protest of their non-support of the invasion of Iraq. He also decapitated an effigy of a human rights lawyer in Times Square.
The big winners of that T being set on fire? Its owner and its artist. Makes one think!