The controversial 'Fearless Girl' statue—installed earlier this month by a giant advertising company as part of a wildly successful Wall Street publicity stunt—was transformed into a Trump supporter overnight, according to one reader who spotted a couple of men in the act of co-opting the tiny bronze quasi-feminist.
A tipster tells us that just after midnight this morning, she saw two men put a Make America Great Again hat on the statue and drape an American flag across it. They also gifted the statue with a few pro-Trump signs, including one reading, "VETS B4 ILLEGALS" and another with a drawing of Pepe the Frog. The reader tells us that though the men dressing the statue claimed nothing they did to it was offensive, Pepe the Frog has in fact been deemed a white nationalist hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League.
The 'Fearless Girl' statue was commissioned by multi-trillion asset manager State Street Global Advisors to celebrate female empowerment, though notably only five of SSGA's 28 top executives are women. Though the statue, located across from Wall Street's famous Charging Bull for one month, has been criticized as a weak PR effort for the finance industry, local politicians like Public Advocate Letitia James and Representative Carolyn Maloney want the statue to be made permanent.
It appears, via social media, that the "Fearless Girl" has since returned to her previous nonpartisan state, though you can click through the above gallery for photos of her brief time as a Trumpette. We reached out to James and Maloney for comment, and will update if and when we hear back.
