Time Wants Donald Trump to Take Down His Fake Magazine Covers

A Time Magazine with Trump on the cover hangs in his golf clubs. It’s fake. https://t.co/GbabQP5hXQ pic.twitter.com/EFTEcyasRE

— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 27, 2017

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump had fake Time magazine covers, with his face on them, hanging up around his various golf properties/weekend escapes from his current job that he didn’t want. None of us are altogether surprised by the king of shouting, “Fake News!” spreading his own around, but Time was caught a little off guard, and now they want the covers taken down.

That’s pretty understandable, as not only is Trump using them as marketing to puff up his own image at his businesses, but the covers themselves aren’t up to Time‘s standards. Notably, they use Trump’s favorite punctuation—the exclamation point—in more than one location (“Trump is hitting on all fronts … even TV!” and “The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!”), whereas Time‘s real covers are a bit more dignified than that, along with other design inconsistencies. Although, at least no more than one exclamation point appeared in a row, which probably took a lot of work on the part of whoever had to convince Trump to tone things down.

The Post reports that at least five of Trump’s clubs feature the fake covers on their walls, so we’ll have to wait and see if any comply with the request to remove them. Why hang fake Time covers, especially when you’ve actually been on the cover? (Though only one time before getting into politics.) It’s hard to say, but you might find a clue in the Post’s rundown of Trump’s actual Time covers, which don’t exactly offer flattering options.

Ever one to be unhappy about such unflattering coverage, Trump took to Twitter again today to blast the Post as “fake news” and complain about the paper’s connection to Amazon, through owner Jeff Bezos. He also complained that Amazon doesn’t pay “internet taxes,” which is basically gibberish. Amazon does charge sales tax, and there’s no such thing as “internet taxes,” unless Trump plans to hit them with some or thinks that’s part of net neutrality or … whatever else he thinks he’s talking about.

Yet again, the person most concerned with “fake news” is the person spreading most of it.

(image: Shutterstock/a katz)

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