Three arcade-game cabinets surrounding a plaque mocking President Donald Trump’s Greenland ambitions sprang up on the National Mall on Monday morning, allowing visitors a chance to play “Operation Epic Furious: Nuuk ’Em All.”
Secret Handshake, the self-described “anonymous art collective” behind the display at the D.C. World War I Memorial, said it was motivated to create the game after the Trump administration released arcade games based on Trump political projects on the White House’s official website earlier this month.
“In them, you get to basically play out a Trump fantasy of what his presidency has been,” Secret Handshake told The Washington Sun. “So we decided to release a gonzo fever dream of one of his other fantasies — taking over Greenland.”
In “Operation Epic Furious: Nuuk ’Em All,” the player controls a small, pixelated Trump as he “battles unthinkable evils like Fully Vaccinated Children, Woke Yetis, and the happiest people on Earth, the Danish,” a Secret Handshake release said.
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Throughout the game, Trump spontaneously falls asleep, challenging the player to repeatedly press a button to wake the president up.
A fourth arcade-game cabinet was placed in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, over the weekend because “if you’re going to make a game about America’s facelift for The Arctic, it seemed only fair they should get to see it first,” Secret Handshake said in a release.
Greenland’s embassy in D.C. did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
“I hope that there is humor and fun in the interactions with the characters and missions,” the group said. “We want to make a satirical take of the insanity of the political climate in this country right now.”
Secret Handshake said the game is a sequel to “Operation Epic Furious: Strait to Hell,” which it released in May after the Trump administration used video-game footage to promote the Iran war.
The satirization of the president and his efforts in foreign policy was not received well by the White House.
“These untalented ‘artists’ should stick to their ugly ‘art’ and refrain from weighing in on foreign policy — which they clearly know nothing about,” White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told The Sun, in a statement identical to one provided to The Washington Post about an earlier installation by the same group.
The group previously crafted and displayed a giant golden statue titled the “Iran War Participation Trophy” at the National Mall in July, with a plaque awarding Trump for his “enthusiastic involvement in the Iran war,” Time reported.
Secret Handshake told The Sun that it took about a month to make the game and exhibit, inspired by classic role-playing games, and expects them to stay up on the National Mall for the next several days and live online for “much longer.”
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