Only five days after Donald J. Trump left office, one of his aides emailed a lawyer to request approval of a formal-looking seal for use on statements from the office of the 45th president.
Margo Martin, one of his closest personal aides, told the lawyer, Scott Gast, that consultants had designed a subtly-modified seal for Mr. Trump.
“They said they changed a few things to avoid trademark issues,” she wrote, asking Mr. Gast if the design was acceptable.
The eventual image that Mr. Trump’s team used — a recognizable eagle from the Great Seal of the United States, placed in a circle — was evocative of the presidential seal that identified Mr. Trump with the job he had just left.
And while he is hardly the first former White House occupant to affix an eagle to his website, the early conversations about presidential imagery revealed what has turned out to be an important obsession of Mr. Trump’s: being seen as much as a future president as a former one.
Persons:
Donald J, Trump, Margo Martin, Scott Gast, “, ”, Mr, Gast
Organizations:
White
Locations:
United States