Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So many bastards, so little time.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

I did not have this on my fuck 2024 bingo card.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: BEHOLD THE MAN!

Late Night Open Thread: BEHOLD THE MAN!

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As I suspected, someone at TP-USA ‘borrowed’ that parody seal — either out of carelessness / inattention, or because the guy behind the scenes was pissed at his Very Important Superiors. (It’s not as though this generation’s Young Repubs are capable of coming up with any half-decent ideas on their own… )

From the Washington Post, “Meet the man who created the fake presidential seal — a former Republican fed up with Trump”:

Charles Leazott hadn’t thought about the seal in months.

The 46-year-old graphic designer threw it together after the 2016 presidential election — it was one part joke, one part catharsis. He used to be a proud Republican. He voted for George W. Bush. Twice.

But Donald J. Trump’s GOP was no longer his party. So he created a mock presidential seal to prove his point.

He substituted the arrows in the eagle’s claw for a set of golf clubs — a nod to the new president’s favorite pastime. In the other set of talons, he swapped the olive branch for a wad of cash and replaced the United States’ Latin motto with a Spanish insult. Then, his coup de grace: a two-headed imperial bird lifted straight from the Russian coat of arms, an homage to the president’s checkered history with the adversarial country.

“This is the most petty piece of art I have ever created,” the Richmond resident said in an interview with The Washington Post.

The seal wasn’t meant for a wide audience. But then, years later, it wound up stretched across a jumbo-tron screen behind an unwitting President Trump as he spoke to a conference packed with hundreds of his young supporters…

By Thursday morning, the Turning Point spokesman said the group had identified the staffer responsible for turning Leazott’s design into a trending topic. He called the incident a last-minute oversight, the result of a quick online search to find a second high-resolution photo of the presidential seal to place behind Trump. He said the mistake was “unacceptable.”

“We did let the individual go,” the spokesman said. “I don’t think it was malicious intent, but nevertheless.”

Leazott doesn’t buy it. He thinks whoever was responsible had to know exactly what they were looking for. He believes the person dug up the image he created and used it intentionally…

After The Post story published, Internet sleuths went looking, too. They found the image’s origin, tracing it back to an online marketplace Leazott set up to sell shirts and stickers sporting the seal, along with other jokey “resistance” apparel. And the citizens of the Web wanted to buy his stuff…

As of Thursday afternoon, Leazott’s shirts were sold out. He said he had to start working with a fulfillment center just to meet the demand. He also revived the primary website for his brand, OneTermDonnie, which includes a paean to the American Civil Liberties Union, where the site says 10 percent of all sales will be directed.

“It’s cool people are buying this, that’s great and all,” he said. “But I’ve got to be honest, I am so tickled in the most petty way possible that the president of the United States, who I despise, stood up and gave a talk in front of this graphic. Whoever put that up is my absolute hero.”

I also like the t-shirts with the slogan “Paid Protestor? I am literally losing income by being here… “

Reader Interactions

36Comments

  1. 1.

    dmsilev

    There’s no way that anyone searching for a Presidential Seal image would have come across that one by accident. They’d hit Wikipedia or some other high-ranked search result much much sooner. This was either someone using a very bizarre search term (‘Trump special seal’ maybe?) or a deliberate act.

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    If John ever needs anyone to redesign the Balloon Juice logo …. watch out!

    I wish Mr. Leazott every success. And, no, that logo did not end up behind the “unwitting” Trump by accident. Not remotely.

  4. 4.

    Martin

    @dmsilev: It was the 3rd usable image when I Google searched ‘presidential seal’ earlier today (seal with an easily removable background). It was super easy to find.

  5. 5.

    dmsilev

    @Martin: Yeah, but that was after this story blew up and lots of people started linking to the spoof image, which definitely changes the weight given to it by the search engines. Doing the same search yesterday would have been different.

  8. 8.

    EthylEster

    According to Occam’s Razor, I have to go with “Young Republicans COULD be this stupid”.

  10. 10.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I was at some store getting something and some Republican senator was on CNN babbling on about how conservatives have to support Trump because conservatives have to stop progress. It was like listening to a drunk talk about how why he has to drink. I would believe all of them hate Trump for all the support they give him; addict mentaity.

  18. 18.

    Martin

    Something to feel good about.

    That’s SpaceXs Starhopper test craft doing a 20m hover test. (yes, there’s an ur-rocket in there somewhere). That’s a private CA company flying what is arguably the most advanced rocket engine ever built – more advanced than what Russia and China can build. It’s not as huge as the F-1 engine on the Saturn V but it has 5x the thrust to weight ratio. It’s also the first methane powered orbital rocket, so you could go to Mars and make fuel when you arrive.

    If they can get the whole package together then we’re looking at another pretty dramatic leap forward for US space technology.

  25. 25.

    AWJ

    You all realize that this is going to be the new covfefe. He totally meant to do that. Bigly. You are already imagining Trump explaining the official revisions he has made to the Presidential Seal: “The two-headed eagle is an ancient symbol of power and authority, which are things that I have a lot of as President. Did you know about this Article 2 thing? I’m also very good at golf, and I have a lot of money.”

  27. 27.

    BlueDWarrior

    @AWJ: Well Trump categorically cannot admit “weakness” or “fault”. So anything that happens to him that any normal person would consider ‘bad’ is instead ‘good’ because nothing ‘bad’ ever happens to Donald J. Trump.

    EVER!!

  28. 28.

    NeenerNeener

    I just noticed the row of golf balls above the eagle heads, and the row of “hammer and sickle”s on the blue border above the red and white stripes. Just brilliant. And the motto translates to “45 is a puppet”. Bravo, Mr. Leazott.

  29. 29.

    SFAW

    @AWJ:

    You all realize that this is going to be the new covfefe. He totally meant to do that. Bigly.

    Just keep making fun of him, loudly and unendingly, and point out what a dumbass he is. “Donnie Dumbass, the Dickless Deadbeat, doesn’t know if he’s American, or Putin’s Puppet. What a cuck!” Or something wittier, preferably.

  31. 31.

    Duane

    Pretty sure the President has people who check on things like that before they appear on stage. Another example of the fail parade that is the Trumpov administration.

  33. 33.

    Uncle Cosmo

    Late 2 da thread but – Bucking frilliant! The only change I could suggest is to change the text in the outer circle to

    REZIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

    (or maybe “UNTIED STATES”) Of course that might’ve given the game away even to a dickhead like Il Douche.

  34. 34.

    Josie

    I love this. Incompetence reigns. Can you imagine the scramble among his staffers to keep him from seeing that picture?

  35. 35.

    Mart

    Also noticed Donnie forming the “OK” symbol with his right hand (the wp of white power) continually during his speech to the youngsters. Do not think it was by accident. Expect the monster to continue this mature hate messaging.

  36. 36.

    karen marie

    @EthylEster: Yeah, my guess is he thought the golf clubs were cute and simply didn’t notice anything else. When you can barely read English, Latin and Spanish are indistinguishable.

Comments are closed.