As Donald Trump addressed a rightwing crowd in Washington on Tuesday, the audience roared in support – but it was a doctored onscreen display that ultimately took center stage.

At a student summit hosted by the conservative group Turning Point USA, the president stood before what looks, to the casual observer, very much like the US presidential seal. A thorough examination by the Washington Post, however, revealed some odd tweaks to the image.

First, the eagle has not one but two heads – making it look a lot like Russia’s coat of arms. And instead of holding arrows, as the bird does in the US seal, it’s holding golf clubs. In its other foot, it’s showing off a bunch of cash. And instead of the US motto, “e pluribus unum”, the seal says in Spanish: “45 is a puppet.” (Trump is the 45th president.)

In other words, a proud presidential symbol was apparently reworked to shame Trump over two of the biggest targets of anti-Trump criticism – Russian involvement in the 2016 election and excessive golfing – and it was displayed behind the president for all to see.

How this happened was initially a mystery. On Wednesday, 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”.

But on Thursday, the Post reported that the image had been created by a graphic designer who, though a former Republican, is no fan of Donald Trump.

Charles Leazott didn’t plan for the image to be displayed behind the president. “It’s just something I tossed together,” he told the paper. “This was just a goofy thing for some people I knew.”

A Turning Point spokesman said a staffer, who has been fired, stumbled on the image in an online search and used it in error. “I don’t think it was malicious intent,” the representative told the paper.

Leazott calls that “a load of crap”, noting that finding the image would require an intentional search; it appears on anti-Trump gear he sells online. He called the staffer “either wildly incompetent or the best troll ever – either way, I love them”.