Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour
Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour(WASHINGTON) — A doctored version of the U.S. presidential seal was projected on a large screen behind President Donald Trump when he took the stage to address a conference of young conservatives in Washington.
The doctored seal was edited in a way that resembled the state seal of Russia with added golf clubs, a poke at Trump’s relationship with Russia and his well-known affinity for golf.
In the fake seal, an eagle with two heads can be seen clutching a set of golf clubs in its left talon, where there would normally be a set of arrows. In its right talon, the eagle clutches money instead of an olive branch.
An eagle with two heads is on the coat of arms of the Russian Federation, and was previously on the coat of arms of the Romanov family, Russia’s last ruling monarchy.
The words above the U.S. presidential seal traditionally read “e pluribus unum,” but in the doctored version, they appear to read “45 es un titere,” which in Spanish means “45 is a puppet.”
The White House had no role in creating the graphics that were displayed behind the president and had not seen the seal in advance of the event, according to a White House spokesman, who referred all further questions to Turning Point USA, which organized and hosted the event for young conservatives.
Turning Point USA did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
The snafu was the result of a last-minute mistake by an audio/video person, who has now been fired, a source told ABC News.
The video team member did a Google Image search for a high-resolution image of a presidential seal, and didn’t notice it was an altered image, a source familiar with the incident said.
The graphic artist who said he originally created the seal as part of a website called “One Term Donnie” recognized it as his own creation as he read news coverage Thursday morning about the doctored seal that appeared behind the president.
“It’s hilarious, I can’t stop smiling at the absurdity,” said Charles, the artist who asked to only be identified by his first name. “I hadn’t even thought about it for over a year. And all of a sudden, I started getting notices of sales.”
Charles said he had no idea his edited seal came to be used at Tuesday’s event but dismissed the idea that it could have been found through a simple Google search of the presidential seal and mistaken as the real deal as a “bunch of hooey.”
“You would have had to be looking for this image,” Charles said. “Before today, it wasn’t coming up on a simple Google search for presidential seal.”
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