For Mar-a-Lago and His Golf Courses Trump Swiped the Coat of Arms From a Former Ambassador to the Soviet Union

“Replacing the Word ‘Integritas,’ Latin for Integrity, With ‘Trump'”

Donald Trump has no problem co-opting the rightful creations of others. During his presidential campaign, many artists – including Adele, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, R.E.M., and Aerosmith – demanded he stop playing their music during his rallies, some forced to threaten lawsuits after repeated attempts to get him to stop. He stiffed the owner of a small music store in the sale of $100,000 of pianos, finally paying him a fraction of their worth. A lengthy USA Today exposé last year revealed accusations that Trump “stole” the work of hundreds of people – “Hundreds allege Donald Trump doesn’t pay his bills,” including, “a dishwasher in Florida. A glass company in New Jersey. A carpet company. A plumber. Painters. Forty-eight waiters. Dozens of bartenders and other hourly workers at his resorts and clubs, coast to coast. Real estate brokers who sold his properties. And, ironically, several law firms that once represented him in these suits and others.”

And now, The New York Times reveals “Trump’s American coat of arms belongs to another family. It was granted by British authorities in 1939 to Joseph Edward Davies, the third husband of Marjorie Merriweather Post, the socialite who built the Mar-a-Lago resort that is now Mr. Trump’s cherished getaway.”

In the United States, the Trump Organization took Mr. Davies’s coat of arms for its own, making one small adjustment — replacing the word “Integritas,” Latin for integrity, with “Trump.”

Joseph D. Tydings, a Democrat and former United States senator from Maryland who is the grandson of Mr. Davies, learned that Mr. Trump was using the emblem, at least at Mar-a-Lago, when he visited the property. Mr. Trump had never asked permission.

“There are members of the family who wanted to sue him,” said Mr. Tydings, a lawyer who wears his family’s coat of arms on a ring. “This is the first I’ve ever heard about it being used anywhere else.”

Add all this to Trump’s quixotic love of all-things Russia, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, perhaps American citizens should not be surprised that Joseph Edward Davies “once served as ambassador to the Soviet Union,” the Times notes.

“There is one historical parallel between Mr. Trump and Mr. Davies,” the Times concludes. “Both men were controversially pro-Russian. Mr. Davies, who played an important role as a go-between for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Soviets, has been criticized for being taken in by Stalin’s propaganda machine.”

All this, along with the fact that Mar-a-Lago’s Marjorie Merriweather Post wanted the estate to officially be used as the “Winter White House,” makes Trump’s purchase of the property and co-opting of Joseph Edward Davies’ Coat of Arms all the more strange.

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