A painting depicting a laughing Kamala Harris tearing into the bloody guts of a dead bald eagle was front and center at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty in the basement of a Washington, D.C. hotel this weekend, eliciting delight from attendees—and bemused side-eyes from online observers.
The conservative group’s “Joyful Warriors” summit, which organizers billed as “the ultimate gathering of parents fighting to defend their parental rights and improve education in America,” drew around 600 attendees over its four days of programming, according to The Atlantic.
Many “stood in awe” of the grotesque, psuedo-satirical painting, the magazine reported.
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It portrayed the vice president—and Democratic nominee for president— kneeling over the bird’s bloodied corpse, gore all over her hands and mouth, a communist symbol stamped onto her jacket. Sitting on a stool in a corner in a dunce cap was President Joe Biden, an oversized knife in his back. Presumably to hammer home the apocalyptic overtones, a nuclear mushroom cloud blooms in the background.
A person walks past a grotesque satirical painting of Vice President Kamala Harris on display at the Moms for Liberty "Joyful Warriors" conference in Washington, D.C. on August 30, 2024.
Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERSA label underneath, per photos posted on social media, identified the work as titled “We Did It Joe” and its creator as Scott LoBaido.
Once characterized by The New York Times as “Staten Island’s most celebrated artist-provocateur,” LoBaido is a notorious MAGA activist-slash-creative known for his dozens of iterations of the American flag on canvas, as well as for occasional bouts of pro-Trump performance art. He has gifted the former president a number of his pieces, including most recently in July, when he presented Donald Trump with his rendering of the aftermath of his assassination attempt.
Earlier this week, LoBaido began hyping up his latest work on social media, announcing that it would be unveiled on Friday in D.C. In a video filmed on the road to the capital, LoBaido boasted to his audience that he was going to have to “apologize to Leonardo da Vinci in advance” of the unveiling.
“This painting, appropriately titled “We Did It Joe,” is going to be the next painting, for the next 500 years, that everybody’s going to know about,” he said. “They might not forget about the Mona Lisa, but she’s going to be in the back seat. It’s the way it is.”
In another video the next day, LoBaido pulled a blue cloth off of the painting in front of the U.S. Capitol, promising that it would “change the course of history.”
It was not clear if the original painting is for sale. (Signed 12-inch-by-16-inch poster prints, however, retail on his website for $59.) Neither LoBaido nor a representative for Moms for Liberty immediately responded to requests for comment on Sunday afternoon.
Moms for Liberty has around 130,000 members around the country. Its summit featured panels on abolishing the Department of Education and pamphlets on child sex trafficking, and was headlined by the right-wing comedian Rob Schneider and former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
Still, proceedings crescendoed with a Friday night appearance by former president Donald Trump, who dropped in for what The Guardian called a “long, zigzagging and at times incoherent” conversation with the organization’s co-founder Tiffany Justice. They drifted from subject to subject, discussing everything from Ivanka Trump’s clothing line to The Apprentice to Trump’s recent stop at Arlington National Cemetery.
One topic left unaddressed: Raw eagle entrails. A notoriously incurious gourmand, the former president likely wouldn’t leap at the chance to sample fresh meat with the gusto of LoBaido’s Harris. But if they were served well-done with ketchup? Perhaps.
