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Trump and Epstein hold hands in large National Mall statue

(Tribune News Service) — A 12-foot-tall statue of Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands in a frozen-in-time flirty frolic materialized on the National Mall Tuesday as the White House fumed.

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The anonymous artists, who also gave us the Golden Television back in June, say they wanted to “celebrate the long-lasting bond between President Donald J. Trump and his ‘closest friend,’ Jeffrey Epstein,” according to a plaque at the base of the faux-bronze wood, foam and resin statue informing viewers that September is informally known as Friendship Month.

Trump’s camp fumed on Tuesday as word got around about the a larger-than-life statue of him gamboling with the late, disgraced, pedophile sex trafficking financier.

“Liberals are free to waste their money however they see fit,” a White House spokesperson told TMZ.

“We felt that Trump had quite a few friends throughout his life,” the artists’ representative Patrick told ArtNews. “One of his friends was Jeffrey Epstein, so we wanted to celebrate that with a statue of what that friendship might feel like.”

“Democrats, the media, and the organization that’s wasting their money on this statue knew about Epstein and his victims for years and did nothing to help them, while President Trump was calling for transparency and is now delivering on it with thousands of pages of documents,” the unidentified spokesperson told TMZ.

Documents from those purported files have been seeping out in recent years, some by court order and others by the Trump administration amid intense pressure from supporters and opponents alike. The artists, who also go by The Secret Handshake, said the work carried no such agenda.

The plaques also quote from the birthday book message alluding to pals and secrets that Trump allegedly penned to Epstein when the latter turned 50.

Hunters found dead in Colorado had been struck by lightning

(NYT) — Two elk hunters who were found dead in a national forest in Colorado last week died instantly from a lightning strike, a county coroner said Tuesday morning.

The Conejos County coroner, Richard Martin, said that the two hunters, Andrew Porter, 25, of Asheville, North Carolina, and Ian Stasko, 25, of Salt Lake City, were struck while standing by a large tree.

“There was a big bolt of electricity that consumed them,” Martin said in a telephone interview, after completing the autopsies.

The men, whose bodies were found on Sept. 18, had been reported missing in the San Juan National Forest Wilderness Area, in the southwestern corner of Colorado, on Sept. 13.

They were found after a search operation that included at least 170 people on ground search and rescue teams, air support and canine units as well as horseback riders.

Porter’s fiancée, Bridget Murphy, said in a post on Facebook that “he was just trying to get back to the car as storms rolled in on Friday – September 12.”

The men were reported missing after they failed to check in at a predetermined time.

The bodies of Porter and Stasko were found about 2 miles away from Los Pinos Trailhead, the Conejos County Sheriff’s Office said.