A poster showing Kamala Harris in Eagles gear with a caption reading “Kamala, Official Candidate of the Philadelphia Eagles” was spotted at a Philadelphia bus stop last week, and was later shown to be fake.
The artist who claimed credit for the piece, Philadelphia native Winston Tseng, released a statement Monday saying the sign was meant to be a satirical piece and was never intended to be placed in a public space. He denied any knowledge of how it ended up there.
“The absurd poster of Kamala Harris wearing an Eagles helmet is my artwork, but I don't know how it ended up on bus stops in Philadelphia,” Tseng wrote.
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Tseng says the piece was not intended to promote Harris' campaign when he designed it, but rather to satirize the concept of celebrities or sports entities endorsing political candidates as a whole.
“My work uses branding and advertising to communicate social issues. On one level, the poster is a parody of the ads we see along I-95 promoting the 'official beer' or the 'official accounting firm of the Philadelphia Eagles.' But the title of this piece is 'Political Support,' and that's the issue at hand,” Tseng said. “Why the fuck do we care who Hulk Hogan or some corporation supports? Yet here we are, and I think the strong reaction we've seen to this satirical support is a reflection of our times.”
The signs were initially seen during the first two days of September at 16th and Spring Garden Streets, 18th Street and JFK Boulevard, and 34th and Walnut in Philadelphia. The sign seen in the photo below at 16th and Spring Garden Streets was later removed on Monday afternoon.
However, the posters also had a URL printed below the title, which directed to an Eagles voting website that shows voting deadlines for last spring’s Pennsylvania and New Jersey primaries. It also provided links for first-time voters, polling locations and guidelines for registering to vote and requesting a ballot.
EAGLES' POLITICAL AD SUPPORTING KAMALA HARRIS FOR PRESIDENT IS 'FAKE,' NFL TEAM SAYS
Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at Enmarket Arena on August 29, 2024 in Savannah, Georgia. Harris has been campaigning in southeastern Georgia for the past two days. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Tseng has also previously posted photos of signs he designed that appropriated a company's official branding at bus stops in Philadelphia, including a Ben & Jerry's-themed sign of President Biden eating ice cream, with the caption “Hard Road to Democracy.”
Tseng also posted a photo of one of his posters featuring former President Trump, in which he appropriated the Pepto Bismol brand. That poster showed Trump on a white background with the text: “Nausea, Heartburn, Insurrection, Upset Stomach, Diarrhea.”
Meanwhile, the Harris Eagles signs came just a week before the presidential debate between Harris and Trump at the National Constitution Center on Tuesday night in Philadelphia, which will be broadcast on ABC.
The posters sparked a strong reaction from a Philadelphia resident, identified by FOX 29 like Joe from South Philly. The man took it upon himself to cover the bus station posters with printed screenshots of the Eagles' official statement denouncing the posters as fake.
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Philadelphia Eagles fan Joe from South Philly printed out copies of the Eagles' statement to cover up a fake political ad that appeared to show the team endorsing presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. (FOX29)
“My concern here is not that someone is expressing an opinion, which everyone has a right to do, but that this person is lying to everyone who comes and uses this stop. That's what I'm very concerned about: the fact that they're spreading lies that the Philadelphia Eagles endorsed. Kamala Harris “As a candidate for President of the United States,” Joe said, “we all know that Philadelphia is the battleground of Pennsylvania and these kinds of lies prevent honesty in the electoral process.”
A city spokesman said NBC Philadelphia that someone must have broken into an enclosed space where the bus station signs are stored and replaced the ones that were there with the counterfeit Harris endorsement signs.
“This was not a digital violation; whoever was responsible for the illegally placed signs entered the securely covered bus stop sign space and somehow placed the signs in the space. Intersection has informed the City's Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS) that they plan to conduct a full inventory tomorrow of all bus stops and remove any illegal signs. The City has a process in place to review all bus stop signs, but this, again, was not a digital sign.”
Pennsylvania could be the “tipping point” in the 2024 presidential election, according to polling and election analysis. Betting odds on Harris in Pennsylvania showed the vice president winning 270 electoral votes to Donald Trump’s 268, but if Trump were to win the state, that would leave him with 287 electoral votes to Harris’s 251.
Polls in the state show Trump gaining ground and closing Harris's previous lead in the state.
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