Scott LoBaido is no stranger to raging in public.
The MAGA-preaching Donald Trump supporter and activist once tossed slices of pizza over the fences of Mayor Eric Adams’ City Hall – set off by a clampdown on coal-fired ovens.
He spilled fake blood outside Manhattan DA Alvin’s Bragg office to decry his woke crime fighting policies, and even posed with a fake electric chair bearing the words, ‘Bring me back’, outside a courthouse to push for the death penalty in New York.
But when the Staten Islander watched the horror of a would-be assassin’s bullet nearly killing Donald Trump Saturday night, LoBaido didn’t take to the streets or turn to inflammatory rhetoric on social media to vent his pain and rage.
He grabbed a paintbrush.
‘I was up all night painting,’ an emotional LoBaido, who had just wrapped an all-nighter painting his own version of the now-iconic image of a bloodied, but defiant, Trump pumping his fist in a show of strength and determination with the American flag in the backdrop, told .com.
‘It’s going to be the most iconic image of our time,’ said LoBaido of the work he has titled ‘Fight.’
Artist Scott LoBaido calls his painting of Donal Trump: ‘Fight.’ He said, ‘it’s going to be the most iconic image of our time’
Former US President Donald J Trump is pictured on the first night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the Fiserv Forum. His first appearance since his attempted assassiantion on Saturday night in Butler, Pennsylvania
When the Big Apple artist, whose controversial career has been punctuated with arrests over some of his brash stunts, heard the news that Trump had been shot, he was shocked.
‘I was horrified – I didn’t know what happened,’ the patriotic portraitist said, adding that the rage he was feeling took him to his local studio to work out the pain with his palette.
And he encourages all angry Republicans to do the same.
He felt the adrenaline and rage coursing through his body. ‘You lose your s**t,’ LoBaido said, urging fellow Republicans to take that anger and channel it for the good.
‘Use the First Amendment – it can save this country if everybody finds out how to use it creatively,’ he stressed.
‘I’m using this as my therapy before I go out and do something stupid,’ he said of his personal art therapy. ‘I just sit and think and my mind gets occupied thinking about what I’m painting and why I’m painting it.’
The Pro-Trump artist is known for his depictions of the US flag. Pictured: LoBaido painting the Betsy Ross American flag outside the headquarters of Nike in New York
LoBaido’s controversial art pieces include a guillotine with the words ‘BRING ME BACK’ written on, suggesting he is in favor of capital punishment
It probably saved a wall from being punched and breaking my hand, he said with a laugh, adding that fellow Trump supporters need to take a beat.
‘I tell everyone to stand down and calm down. Let’s not get stupid.
‘Whatever you want to do right now, hold it until November 5,’ he said, calling for change through the ballot box.
‘Get productive,’ he advised. ‘Get your 18-year-old nephew to register to vote, join poll watchers on Election Day or get 20 parents together and join the school board,’ he said.
‘There’s so much that people can do, using that right to use that brain instead of sitting there with that rage not doing anything.’
Through muffled tears, LoBaido said that he’s learned to suppress any dangerous impulses by channeling them into his art.
‘This is the blood of the innocent people of New York City getting slaughtered because of DA Bragg,’ Lobaido, a self-proclaimed patriot activist and artist, said as he poured the fake blood
‘Thank God I’ve learned how to do art as therapy and it keeps me from doing stupid things. Don’t do drugs – create,’ he said. ‘Art is the best f***ing therapy.’
Unsure of where his paintbrush would lead him, the firebrand said he suddenly knew exactly what to do when he saw the image of the man ‘who was just touched by the hand of God,’ he said, explaining he believes it was a miracle that Trump’s life was spared.
‘If you’re not religious, this will make you religious. This has never happened in the history of any shooting – to miss by millimeters.’
‘The image of this man – who has no f***ing fear – to get up with blood on his face, not even knowing what happened to him, and putting his fist up in the air’ moved LoBaido to tears.
‘Then the beautiful images of that man who has no f***ing fear, to put that fist up in the air – It’s going to be the most iconic image of our time,’ said LoBaido, who’s the subject of the new documentary, ‘The Relentless Patriot,’ which depicts the artist’s exploits.
Scott LoBaido marched up to the gates of New York City Hall before flinging slices of margarita pizza over them in a protest against a proposed new emissions law
Pizza gate is the latest stunt by the Staten Islander, who is known for his right-wing political art demonstrations and for depicting the American flag
Though LoBaido, who said he worked 15 straight hours, fueled ‘on cigarettes and a glass of vodka,’ mulled over different versions, this was the one that was most poignant and reflective of the 45th president’s might – mental and physical.
‘This is the most epic piece I think I’ve ever done,’ he said of the image that will forever be seared into our consciousness, adding, ‘Because that wil be the most epic image of our generation. It will be like the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima.’
A resounding chorus of support – and would-be buyers – followed LoBaido’s post of the freshly painted portrait on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.
Followers and Trump supporters gushed over the poignant piece, asking how to order it.
‘I’m looking forward to seeing this hung in the oval,’ one of them quipped hopefully.