President Donald Trump showed up to the so-called "student summit" for a political action committee called Turning Point USA on Tuesday, delivering a speech to attendees made up of his supporter base of aggressively conservative voters and political activists.
Trump's speech wasn't out of the ordinary. It wasn't as much a speech as a series of scripted remarks with long interludes of off-script commentary. That's Trump's style. There was even the usual pre-speech hype video before Trump appeared on stage at the Marriott Marquis in D.C.
However, once Trump got on stage, a bizarre image appeared behind the 45th President, according to multiple reports. It sort of looked like the Presidential Seal, but it wasn't. Instead, it was a mock symbol that's left many questioning how it got on the screen in the first place. The mock symbol has the same outlines of the Presidential Seal with key differences. The bald eagle was replaced with a two-headed eagle, something found in the Russian coat of arms to symbolize its empire, and one of the eagle's talons was holding a number of golf clubs, with the other holding 13 arrows.
Also, the phrase "45 es un titere," is written, which means in Spanish, "45 is a puppet." On the official Presidential seal, the bald eagle's mouth holds a banner reading "E pluribus unum," meaning "out of many, one" in Latin.
The podium from which Trump spoke had the correct seal, as did the logo behind Trump as he spoke.
This appears to have been a practical joke, with a subversive figuring a way to get the image on screen as Trump stood on stage. But as to who specifically did it, it's unclear.
While it is not illegal to create and use a parody of the Presidential seal, it is illegal to use the Presidential seal in promotional matter, only for official government purposes. However, in March 2018, the Trump Organization ordered replica Presidential seals to use as tee markers for Trump-owned golf courses. Subsequently, the tee markers were removed.
