The U.S President Donald Trump appeared at a right-wing rally in front of a fake presidential seal, manipulated to make seemingly satiric references to Russia and golf. The tweaked image flashed up on a screen behind the president as he spoke to a summit hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA in Washington. The normally solitary bald eagle was seen with 2-heads, made to resemble the 2-headed bird on the official Russian coat of arms in a mocking nod to Trump’s woes with investigations into Moscow’s election meddling. The symbolic bird also showed up gripping a bag of golf clubs. It was manifestly a joke about the president’s preference for spending so much time on the links.
The White House and Turning Point USA said they were uninformed of why or how the modified image appeared on the screen. A spokesman for Turning Point USA informed The Washington Post that it was a last-minute audio/visual mistake after the newspaper first highlighted the modified seal. He said, “I can’t figure out who did it yet. I don’t know where they got the image from”. The spokesperson also explained that the organization was still trying to determine who was responsible and where they got the image from.
Richard Painter served as the George W Bush administration’s chief White House ethics lawyer. Painter also informed the Post, “To let someone project something on the screen that isn’t controlled by the White House is pretty stupid”. He said, “Someone is going to be getting in trouble, but they got one heck of a good laugh out of it”. Painter also explained that First Amendment freedom of expression rights allowed people to parody the official presidential seal. A legal professor at Washington University, Kathleen Clark said, “Was someone at Turning Point trolling Trump? I just think Putin would probably approve”.