The Ironic Timing Of Trump’s Fake Time Cover

Image via Twitter/William LeGate

At a handful of Trump’s golf clubs, there’s a Time magazine cover with the former “Apprentice” host featured front and center. “Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!” the headline reads. And above his head, in all caps, reads a phrase like awkward ticker tape: “TRUMP IS HITTING ON ALL FRONTS ... EVEN TV!”

The only problem? The cover is 100% fake. We know this because Time didn’t have a March 1, 2009, issue, which is the date printed on the fake cover golfers viewed in Trump-funded pro shops from Florida to the U.K. There are other more subtle tells, like the thin red border with no strip of white. And unlike a real Time cover, which features subheadings at the top of the page, Trump’s fake cover has them floating along the right side. But the most obvious tell might be the exclamation points — a punctuation mark we know Trump uses prodigiously, while the magazine does not.

It’s also interesting Trump would include a fake headline about real environmental problems on his fake magazine cover. Do I smell conspiracy? Perhaps a socially conscious Trump trapped inside a science-denying body is crying out for help in very ineffective ways?

Theories aside, a Time spokesperson, Kerri Chyka, confirmed for the Washington Post on Tuesday that Trump’s cover is, in fact, entirely bogus. And later that afternoon, another spokesperson confirmed Time’s request that Trump remove all the fake covers from his clubs. Case in point: Trump is fake news.

This public embarrassment is particularly timely given Trump’s recent resurgence of fake news accusations on Twitter.

There’s this tweet about the “Amazon Washington Post,” whatever that means…

A desperate attempt to convince people he knows what he’s talking about when all evidence points to the contrary…

And a classic slandering of the highly esteemed New York Times.

But it’s not just The New York Times. Apparently, according to Trump, “they are all fake news!”

Really, Donald, that exclamation point is your biggest tell.