Which came first: the chicken or Trump?
An inflatable chicken with golden hair resembling President Donald Trump’s coiffure was seen at the Tax March, organized to demand the president’s tax returns, on Saturday.
Why a chicken, where did it come from and what does it have to do with Trump?
Rooster statue
The chicken, or more specifically, the rooster, was first designed by artist Casey Latiolais in November 2016 for a Chinese company, which turned the design into a 23-foot-tall statue to celebrate the Year of the Rooster in the Chinese Lunar Calendar. It was placed outside a shopping mall in the Chinese city of Taiyuan about a month later.
Latiolais didn’t comment at the time about the similarities between the rooster design and Trump, saying he was just asked to design the statue for the Year of the Rooster.
Inflatable balloons
A different Chinese company then began making inflatable balloons of a rooster that looked very similar to the statue. The balloons, some as tall as 65 feet, have been sold online.
Bringing the balloons to America
Danelle Morton, an organizer of the Tax March in San Francisco, saw the balloons online and thought they would make the perfect mascot for the march. “Donald Trump was a big chicken for not releasing his taxes,” she wrote in a Slate column explaining how she found the balloons.
So on March 13, the first rooster balloon arrived in America. Shortly afterward, organizers of the tax march in other cities began fundraising and ordering the balloons, Morton said.
Tax March logo
Basing his design on the rooster, NYC artist Cassady Benson designed a caricature of a worried hen, guarding an egg with dollar signs. The hen, bearing the same golden hair as the original design, became a logo for the Tax March. It appears on the official T-shirts for the marches, as well as on posters and flyers.
‘Chicken Donald’ animation
The NYC Tax March Facebook page shared an animation of a chicken called “Chicken Donald” that showed him trying to hide his tax returns. The video was made by animator Debra Solomon and the cartoon closely resembles the hen seen on the Tax March T-shirts and signs.
