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Trump Effigy Set Ablaze on Britain's Bonfire Night

by Reuters

   LONDON --

   He turned "You're fired" into his reality show catch phrase, but it was
   Donald Trump who went up in flames on Saturday.

   An effigy of Donald Trump, that is. It was all part of Britain's annual
   Bonfire Night celebrations.

   An 11-meter-high model of the Republican U.S. presidential candidate
   was burned at a fireworks display in the town of Edenbridge, outside
   London.

   The sculpture showed Trump, complete with his trademark mop of hair,
   holding his Democratic rival for the White House, Hillary Clinton, in a
   headlock, and sporting a pair of Mexico-themed shorts.

   "I think he would be quietly amused," artist Frank Shepherd said of his
   muse.

   Every year on November 5, Britain celebrates a failed attempt to blow
   up the Houses of Parliament in 1605 by letting off fireworks and
   lighting bonfires. Usually the bonfires are topped with an effigy of
   the leader of the 17th-century "Gunpowder Plot," Guy Fawkes, but this
   year was different, at least in Edenbridge and other places scattered
   around the country.

   Bonfire Night celebrations in the town 50 kilometers south of the
   capital often feature effigies of unpopular celebrities. In the past,
   residents have burned likenesses of former FIFA president Sepp Blatter,
   former Prime Minister Tony Blair, deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein
   and disgraced American cyclist Lance Armstrong.

   Effigies of Trump, including one depicting him sitting atop a Mexican
   border-control wall, were also due to go up in smoke elsewhere in
   Britain, including in the town of Lewes, about 100 kilometerss from
   London.