When U.S. President Donald Trump took the stage at the Turning Point USA student summit on Wednesday, he didn’t appear to notice that he was standing before a doctored presidential seal that featured golf clubs and an eagle that recalled a symbol from Russian and Slavic countries.
Turning Point USA is a conservative non-profit aimed at promoting “freedom, free markets and limited government.”
WATCH: President Trump calls Mueller testimony a ‘hoax’ and a ‘witch hunt’
Founded by Charlie Kirk, the organization invited Trump to speak before an audience of high school students.
But when he took the stage, he stood in front of a symbol that was decidedly not the official presidential seal.
The U.S. presidential seal features the president’s coat of arms, as well as a one-headed eagle holding arrows in its talons, and a ring of stars and words including the U.S. motto, “E pluribus unum,” or “out of many, one.”
The seal projected on stage at Turning Point’s event had an eagle with two heads — similar to the Russian coat of arms, as well as the flags of Albania, Montenegro and Serbia, as noted by The Washington Post.
Get breaking National news
Golf clubs, however, feature on no nations’ flags.
The doctored seal is similar to one that appears on the website Inktale, attached to merchandise such as t-shirts, tank tops, pillows and bags.
WATCH: Mueller says his investigation was ‘not a witch hunt’
Closer inspection of the symbol finds the Spanish words “45 es un titere” in place of the U.S. motto.
In Spanish, the words on the doctored symbol mean, “45 is a puppet,” the Post noted.
A spokesman for Turning Point said he didn’t know how the joke seal ended up on stage and called it a “last-minute A/V mistake” that may have come from the team handling visual and audio production.
READ MORE: Robert Mueller testimony — Mueller confirms Trump can be charged once he leaves office
The golf clubs could be a dig at the amount of time that Trump has spent on the links during his presidency.
The Huffington Post noted in May that Trump has spent more than double the days golfing that Obama did by this point in his White House tenure, and that this activity has cost taxpayers over $102 million.
The double-headed eagle, however, could reference a story that has dogged Trump since he entered office: that Russians interfered in the 2016 election.
The story took on more fuel Wednesday, when ex-special counsel Robert Mueller testified before Congress about his report into election interference.
Mueller found that the Russians interfered, but not that the Trump campaign colluded with them.
- Trudeau says he could have acted faster on immigration changes, blames ‘bad actors’
- How a Republican in Canada views Trump: ‘Not asking for anything crazy’
- Trudeau touts embattled carbon levy to global audience, says it faces misinformation
- Canada will ‘do the work’ to ease Trump officials’ border worries: minister
-
![]()
‘Bad actors’ exploiting Canada’s immigrants for own interests: Trudeau -
![]()
‘Fight fire with fire’: Poilievre vows to counter Trump economic policies, U.S. tariffs on Canada -
![]()
How to deal with 2nd Trump term? Republican insider shares behind-the-scenes observations -
![]()
U.S. House Speaker Johnson says releasing Gaetz report would be ‘breach of protocol’
Comments