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On Tuesday, at the Turning Point USA conference, President Trump appeared at a campaign-rally-like event where somehow a fake Presidential Seal appeared. The seal which presented on the stage behind Pres. Trump as he basked in the audiences attention, and it looked enough like the real thing to fool everyone. But it was strangely different. The eagle had two heads, and the slogan was strangely different, and so on. How did a fake Presidential Seal appear on the stage at an official President Trump event? And who created this fake seal, is a byproduct of the Internet Age.
The conference is aimed at youth, apparently. At the 43 minute mark of
the official video of the event the organizers began a video praising Donald Trump's life using a number of known lies (for example - that he only got a small loan from his father, when in truth the Trump siblings received an enormous amount of money through an illegal tax avoidance inheritance scheme). After 10 minutes of this video, President Trump enters the stage and it looks like this:
On the screen there are two versions of the Presidential Seal. In the center is the real seal, with "PRESIDENT DONALD J TRUMP" superimposed. To the left is the fake seal. For a closeup:
This is hilariously different from the real Presidential seal. The slogan - "45 es un titere" is Spanish for "45 is a puppet", instead of the 13 arrows the eagle is clutching 13 golf clubs, and in the other foot is clutching a wad of cash instead of an olive branch. The eagle has two heads straight out of the Russian Coat of Arms, and on the shield there are Sickle-and-Hammer's instead of the Stars.
For better comparison here is both. They look a lot alike, don't they.
According to TurningPoint USA, an investigation into how this happened turned up a lone staffer. Supposedly there was a lot of pressure to put the event together, and the staffer in a mad rush to prepare all the graphics found this image and used it.
In the words of Monty Python, those responsible for this incident have been sacked. No word on whether those responsible for sacking those responsible have been sacked.
I don't buy the excuse. A search on Google Image Search for "Trump Presidential Seal" or "USA Presidential Seal" or other search terms does not accidentally show this image. The only reason this image appears currently is because of the flurry of news articles about the image.
For this to be the accident of a rushed staffer blindly grabbing an image would mean the image naturally showed up in a service like Google Image Search. Even a search for "Trump's Presidential Seal", the phrase used on the page where the fake seal actually shows up, does not turn up this product. It does turn up other fake presidential seals (I'll show a few below) but not this one.
It seems therefore that the staffer in question did not do this accidentally.
For comparison this is the official Coat of Arms for the Russian Federation.
The fake Presidential Seal for Donald Trump was created by Charles Leazott. According to news reports he threw it together as a cathartic joke following the 2016 election.
Leazott is a self-described former Republican who became disgusted with his party during that election.
“This is the most petty piece of art I have ever created,” the Richmond, Virginia, resident said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Supposedly the seal wasn't meant for a wide audience. But, it was part of a collection of similar anti-Trump-GOP artwork on inktale.com, a site that lets folk sell customized merchandise.
In other words, Leazott may have been cathartically creating art work to express his frustration at the state of politics in the USA, but he was also attempting to make a buck or three off his efforts.
His other work includes:
The Inktale website is open to anyone who wants to start "selling" via their platform. It is similar to Zazzle, Cafe Press and other sites where folks join as a Seller and start uploading artwork that can then be put onto products for sale.
Charles Leazott obviously has a talent for a certain kind of humorous image. That Donnie Dollar image is hilarious if you start looking at the details.
A few months ago I wrote a pair of blog posts about how to make money online by selling print-on-demand products with your images:
- Learn how to make money by selling print-on-demand products like custom t-shirts, mouse pads, and more
- Make money uploading images for T-shirt designs to Teespring, Zazzle, etc
Obviously this can not only be a side gig to make money, or a full time money making thing, but it can be an outlet for political frustrations.
Other fake Presidential Seals featuring Donald Trump
