Eight Years of Resistance, One Billboard: Grand Ave’s Visual War on Trumpism
Take a look at many of the iterations that have graced the desert sky.
For years, a single billboard in downtown Phoenix has quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) screamed dissent into the desert sky.
Located above 11th and Grand Avenues, the Grand Avenue Billboard Project is one of Arizona’s longest-running, most consistent public protests — expressed entirely through art. Privately funded and curated by Phoenix artist Beatrice Moore, the project has featured timely, confrontational political commentary since at least 2004.
But in the Trump era, the billboard became something else entirely: a recurring visual battlefield.
We’ve gathered nearly every iteration captured over the years, culminating in this month’s fiery “Swamp King.”
Billboard Timeline Highlights
• 2017 – Trumpocalypse
• 2020 – “Don the Con” + COVID death toll
• 2024 – “Putin’s Mini-Me” birthday riot
• 2025 (March) – Project 2025 + Puppetmaster Musk
• 2025 (July) – Swamp King returns
The Trumpocalypse (2017)
The one that started it all. Created by California artist Karen Fiorito, it depicted Trump flanked by dollar signs and nuclear mushroom clouds. The piece sparked national backlash, Fox News outrage, and death threats — but Moore refused to take it down.
Fun fact: The original vinyl is still up there — buried beneath every new design.
“Don the Con”
Trump appears in an orange jumpsuit behind prison bars, flanked by stylized dollar sign swastikas and nuclear clouds. The badge on his chest reads “Don the Con”, and just below it — barely visible — a ticker counts the number of COVID-19 deaths to date, a haunting record of the administration’s response to the pandemic. One of the starkest and most literal designs to date, this version was a direct indictment of both corruption and deadly inaction.
“Putin’s Mini-Me”
Installed in early 2024, this billboard shows Trump as a diaper-clad baby throwing a tantrum in a fiery picnic setting, surrounded by Confederate iconography, a Hitler Colonel Sanders, and burning Constitution pages1. The scene is littered with blocks spelling “I AM CRAZY” and “FASCISM,” while another Trump baby wears a “Putin’s Mini-Me” onesie. The centerpiece — a birthday cake that reads “Happy January 6th!” — ties the chaos directly to the Capitol insurrection, recasting it as a grotesque celebration. One of the most maximalist and absurdist entries in the series, it weaponizes satire to mock authoritarianism, immaturity, and historical revisionism all at once.
Elon the Puppetmaster (March 2025)
Set against a stark red backdrop, this billboard features Elon Musk holding the strings of a miniaturized Donald Trump puppet, complete with a Russian flag and crown. The bold text reads:
“PROJECT 2025: Trump, Musk and Enablers Are Shredding the Constitution and Screwing the American People”
A searing critique of the MAGA policy agenda known as Project 2025, the piece also skewers tech plutocracy and authoritarian alignment. A badge-like emblem resembling the altered swastika from previous Fiorito works appears in the corner. At the bottom:
“Funded on behalf of the 77.89 million citizens who voted for someone other than Trump.”
It’s one of the clearest textual denunciations in the series — part protest art, part civic manifesto.
Swamp King (July 2025)
Installed just in time for the 4th of July, this is Fiorito’s latest — and most chaotic — piece yet.
Trump sits shirtless and crowned, knee-deep in the literal and figurative muck:
A golden toilet
MAGA-hat gators
Crypto chains
A sinking Tesla
A mushroom cloud
A riot cop armed with cash and explosives
Fiorito called it:
“A snapshot of our current political climate under the Trump Regime: full of corruption, militarism, cronyism and just plain ugliness.”
And on the power of mockery:
“Tyrants hate being mocked... it undermines their power, encourages dissent, and makes them look weak.”
The Artist
Karen Fiorito, based in California, is a printmaker and activist whose work spans human rights, climate change, and anti-authoritarian themes. She holds an MFA from Arizona State University, where she first exhibited on this billboard as part of her thesis in 2004. Today, she serves as president of the Los Angeles Printmaking Society.
Her art isn’t just protest — it’s provocation, resistance, and a call to action.
The Billboard
Privately owned and operated, the Grand Avenue Billboard Project remains an outlier in a media landscape dominated by corporate control. Beatrice Moore founded the project to preserve space for controversial, issue-oriented public art — especially as most billboards in Phoenix were being bought up and sterilized by ad companies in the '90s.
Like the Trumpocalypse billboard under there, staring, we’re watching Arizona’s leaders trip over themselves in real time. Subscribe before we lose it and go full billboard artist. Or help us pay for a billboard… your choice.
This sadly aged well with Trump’s second term showing he’s willing to ignore court orders and Congress’ refusal to hold him accountable.