Colorado Billboard Features GOP with Soviet Hammer and Sickle

Trump and Putin
President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a joint news conference after their meeting in Helsinki, Finland, July 16, 2018. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

Anne Landman, Colorado provocateur, blogger, and author made a public statement about President Donald Trump that referenced his controversial summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The statement: a billboard in Mesa County, Colorado that shows the GOP on an all-red background, with the 'O' replaced by a Soviet-era hammer and sickle. Landman organized and paid for the billboard.

"I bought the billboard myself for a week purely out of my own level of outrage and frustration over Trump's secret meeting with Putin in Helsinki," Landman told Colorado news outlet, The Daily Sentinel. "The things he did and said, trusting Putin over the conclusions of all of our own country's intelligence agencies, blaming Americans for Russian cyber attacks on our election, making secret agreements, offering to consider handing Americans over to Putin's intelligence agents to be interrogated, it was just unbelievable."

Landman said the sign originally cost her $265 a week and has received numerous donations from locals around the town to extend the billboard for a few more weeks. She's collected over $1,695 and plans to post the sign on billboards at two other locations. The electronic billboard is currently on display on U.S. Highway 6&50.

The owner of the image, MadDog PAC, a political action committee, gave Landman permission to use the sign after she saw it on Facebook. Landman said someone else also used the image to make stickers without permission from MadDog.

This is not the only political prank that has been pulled in the state of Colorado. An unidentified person placed a portrait of Vladimir Putin in a space meant for a portrait of Donald Trump in the state's capital building, The Guardian reported on Saturday. The portrait was placed on an easel below a wall of past presidents.

State senator, Steven Fenberg, tweeted a picture of the portrait on Thursday before it was removed by a tour guide.

Trump and Putin had a secret meeting and joint press conference in Helsinki early in July. Following the press conference, Trump was subject to massive criticism in the U.S. after he refused to make their conversation public and took Putin's side when answering questions about Russian interference with the 2016 election.

As for the billboard, Landman said, it "seems to be a lightning rod for the frustration of people with the Trump administration, and what it is doing to our country."

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