YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — A 3D-printed bust of Elon Musk measuring about 12 feet tall has been making the rounds at some of the country’s most popular national parks, including a drive through Yellowstone National Park (YNP) over the weekend, according to reports.
The statue, accompanied by signs that read “Make America Wait Again” and “Now With Longer Lines Thanks To DOGE Cuts!,” was seen in YNP on Saturday, Aug. 2, according to NBC Montana.
The sculpture has also been seen at Arches, Yosemite and Mount Rainier.
“The sculpture, built by a Michigan-based artist found online, was designed to look lifelike, and just exaggerated enough to be meme-ready,” Fox News reported in an interview with an individual they call the “anonymous organizer behind the spectacle.”
That organizer described the sculpture as “part protest, part performance art,” to Fox News, which characterized it as being “aimed at drawing attention to recent layoffs and budget reductions across the National Park Service.”
The anonymous organizer said the statue’s appearance in Mount Rainier National Park inspired reactions from park visitors on a day when parking lots were overflowing.
“People crowded around it, took photos, laughed, flipped it off, gave it thumbs-up,” he told Fox News. “It ran the gamut — a good cross-section of America.”
Another anonymous source spoke to NBC Montana about the demonstration. The news outlet credited the following quote to “an artist who spoke on the condition of anonymity”:
“The idea is to kind of pair beautiful American iconic imagery such as national parks, with a fun satirical twist on Elon Musk’s gutting of the government through DOGE.”
Both anonymous sources indicated that the sculpture would appear at additional national parks, but declined to go into specifics.
