It looks an awful lot like an overlay that is partially obscuring the crawler. The letters and symbols are just a shade darker than the crawler's background colors, just enough to stand out, but not dark enough to be read effectively. There is quite an offset ( about 1/2 space) in the crawler text and the overlay text.
Next to the S&P crawler, the overlay text says "to black".
Below the right leg of the X over the VP's face is an image that looks similar to a human face. It can be seen on the negative, but not on the original.
Under the right leg, on the negative view, the image looks like a soccer ball.
There is also the number 6 covering the E in criticize.