Donald Trump has always been impressed with Time Magazine and is often heard bragging about how many times his picture has adorned its cover. Most of the claims are bogus. Until the election of 2016 he made it only once (January 1989), but truth has never been a guiding principle for The Donald.
Given that the magazine didn’t see fit to honor him with another cover, it was only a matter of time until he ordered his minions to create one. This is the first fake Trump Time Magazine cover, fraudulently created in order to impress those who crossing into Trumpland. Take note of its date, March 1, 2009. There was no March 1, 2009 issue of Time Magazine. Pure fake news.
I’m impressed, not by the cover but by the chutzpah, and knowing how The Donald adores seeing himself on the cover of Time, I’ve put together a selection of my favorite fake covers in what I call The Cover Story of Donald J. Trump . The story begins with some early imprinting. There, on the cover of Henry R. Luce’s signature publication, he saw true power staring out at him. These were the gentlemen he imprinted on in those early years.
With powerful authority figures like these to model themselves on, Donald and his father took to racism like ducks to water. They rejected and oppressed Jews and “coloreds” and “others” who tried to rent their racially pure apartments in Queens until October of 1973 when the Department of Justice brought the hammer down and sued them for discrimination under the Fair Housing Act. From then on they struggled to subordinate their racism – until they couldn’t.
Compliance with the Fair Housing Act put a bigoted burr under The Donald’s saddle, and he simmered in wait until the appropriate time to release his racist revenge. There were many opportunities, but the first headline grabber was his full-page ad in the New York Times asking that the death penalty be imposed on The Central Park Five, five black teenagers, for raping and beating a white woman jogger in Central Park.
It was a sensational case and, with Trump actively egging the prosecutors on, the five boys were convicted on the basis of coerced confessions. As a consequence they spent varying terms of between 6 and 13 years in prison before being cleared of the crime. The real perpetrator eventually confessed – supported by DNA evidence – and the boys (now men) were released. To this day, The Donald believes they committed the crime and no amount of DNA evidence is going to change his opinion.
Undeterred by the truth or facts, the next iteration of his animus toward African-Americans surfaced in his embrace of the “birther” conspiracy – claiming that Barack Obama was, like his father, born in Kenya and therefore not a US citizen. Even now, following eight years of the Obama presidency, and in spite of the physical production of Obama’s original Hawaiian birth certificate, Trump denies its truth or authenticity.
Yet… somehow, maybe with help from the Russian Federation, today he is the President of the United States and the Time Magazine covers, real and unreal, are coming at an astonishing rate. Here are some of my favorites:
And, with his ascension to the throne (he likes to think of it that way) he is free to fantasize. At first, his affection for the military moved him to appoint three Generals to his Cabinet (Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster), but it wasn’t long until he told the press “I know more than any of the Generals.” Two years into his regency, the military triad is gone and the king, too disabled to serve in the military because of bone spurs, is the Commander in Chief of America’s armed forces with access to the nuclear codes.
And these recent fake covers show the consequences…
Nevertheless, justice may soon prevail and bring an end to Fake News.
Do you think he even knows that Time Magazine is a relic of the past just as much as he is? I doubt it, but that makes the story even better. Fake News waits for no man. Get your copy today.
