How this happened remains a mystery. The Post spoke to a White House representative who said officials had not seen the image in advance. A spokesperson for Turning Point USA, meanwhile, told the paper he was stumped as to the origins of the image, characterizing it as “a last-minute A/V mistake”.
No, it's not a mystery, and it wasn't a mistake, good grief. It was a well-conducted little piece of sabotage, probably a coordinated effort the like of which Trump's staff can only dream...
A Turning Point USA employee has been fired over their involvement in placing an altered presidential seal behind Donald Trump during a speech earlier in the week.
A spokesperson for the conservative group told the Washington Post, that a member of its video team responsible for the seal, which featured a two-headed eagle similar to the one on Russia’s seal as well as a pack of golf clubs, had been dismissed.
“We did let the individual go,” the spokesperson said. “I don’t think it was malicious intent, but nevertheless.”....
A source told CNN that the fake presidential seal appeared on the screen after the video team was told they needed to find hi-res image of the seal on short notice, leading to a flustered Google search.
“One of our video team members did a Google Image search for a high-res png presidential seal,” the source said. They added that the team member “did the search and with the pressure of the event, didn’t notice that it is a doctored seal.”
The graphic artist who created a fake presidential seal that mocked President Donald Trump went from anonymity to anti-Trump folk hero this week after the president stood before the seal during a gathering of conservative teens on Tuesday.
Turning Point USA, the organization that hosted Trump at its Teen Action Summit in Washington, say "a last-minute A/V mistake" caused the doctored seal to flank a gleaming Trump while he was onstage at the Washington Marriott Marquis.
But the man who created it, Charles Leazott, according to multiple media reports, explains it this way.
"There are only two options here," Leazott told Forbes. "This really was an accident and their incompetence knows no bounds (or) someone did this on purpose and they're lying to cover that fact up."
The Washington Post reported that Leazott, 46, is a former Republican from Richmond, Virginia, who twice voted for George W. Bush.
Leazott told Forbes he made the fake seal in 2016 amid Trump's run-up to the presidency as a way to amuse friends and family. He even started an online store where people could buy posters and T-shirts of the image.
However, widespread enthusiasm for the seal didn't appear to take off until Thursday, after the seal's appearance made news. That's when, according to the Washington Post, Leazott noticed news coverage of the seal while drinking morning coffee.
“It’s been chaos,” he told the Post. “This is not what I expected when I woke up today.”
In preceding years, reports Forbes, Leazott had let his website fall by the wayside. "Cut to today," he told the magazine, "and I put the site back up."
