17 Trump magazine covers so brilliant you’ll want to frame them (images)

Donald Trump has always wanted to see his face on magazine covers, but this wasn’t what he had in mind. The man has a huge ego, but he’s not getting much to feed it with lately.

With his approval ratings hitting a record low of just 36 percent, according to Gallup Polls, most of the press he’s getting is highly unflattering. If anything good can be said about his time in the White House, it’s this: You’ve got to love the clever, creative, and often boldly artistic magazine covers.

The New York Post and The NY Daily News are having a field day, but we expect that from the tabloids. What’s striking is that #45 has proven so cruel, hateful, hypocritical, and out for his own gain, even serious publications are getting their digs in. You know someone’s a terrible president when you’ve got the likes of Time, The Economist, Newsweek, and Der Spiegel putting out unflattering magazine covers about them week after week.

17 amazing magazine covers that offer scathing critiques of the president.

17. There’s one New Republic, September. Where do you get financing for your business ventures with a bad rep and multiple bankruptcies under your belt? The Russian Mob. The upcoming issue of the New Republic‘s magazine cover is a doozy. And inside is a well-reported piece that accuses Donald Trump of building luxury properties to launder Russian mob money. “Trump’s Russian Laundromat,” the article reads. “How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.”

“Trump’s Russian Laundromat,” the article reads. “How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.”

16. Time, August 28. Edel Rodriguez’s “Hate in America” cover for Time makes such a powerful statement it’s gone viral two weeks before the issue actually comes out. When asked about his response to recent events in Charlottesville, he answered, “These people are hiding behind the flag and the idea of patriotism it connotes. They have tried to change the language from ‘White Supremacist’ to ‘White Nationalist,’ to further hide behind the flag, and the idea of patriotism.” The Cuban-American artist then added, “But they are espousing the same views as always.” To buy this and other magazine covers from Time, visit the Time Cover Store.

15. We can also thank Rodriguez for his brilliant meltdown series from earlier this year.

https://twitter.com/LonestarIndChic/status/894540556176683008

14. The Economist, August 19. Jon Berkeley’s stunning magazine cover art shows Donald Trump shouting into a Ku Klux Klan hat made into a megaphone. Inside, the featured article declares, “Donald Trump has no grasp of what it means to be president. U-turns, self-regard and equivocation are not what it takes.” When you consider the source — a parlor full of doughty old toffs from Britain making wry observations on “the dismal science” — the scathing tone of that sentence alone is astonishing. To buy this and other back issues of The Economist, click here.

13. The New Yorker, August 17. The artist behind the magazine cover, David Plunkert, aptly titled it “Blowhard.” He was floored by the president’s response to the violence in Charlottesville, he explained. “President Trump’s weak pushback to hate groups—as if he was trying not to alienate them as voters—compelled me to take up my pen,” Plunkert wrote. “A picture does a better job showing my thoughts than words do; it can have a light touch on a subject that’s extremely scary.” To buy this and other New Yorker magazine covers, click here.

12. Newsweek, August 3. Republicans always seem to go on about the virtues of “hard work.” But instead of working hard, our president seems to be hardly working. Newsweek‘s scathing magazine cover proclaims “LAZY BOY. Donald Trump is bored and tired. Imagine how bad he’d feel if he did any work.”  Titled, “Trump, America’s Boy King: Golf and Television Won’t Make America Great Again,” the article inside slams the GOP’s president for his golf vacations, tweeting, Fox News watching, and running a chaotic White House.

“Trump plainly wants his legacy to reflect that slogan on the baseball hat donned by his supporters,” comes the grim verdict. “He wants to be the man who pulled America out of its post-industrial malaise, silenced talk of national decline and China’s ascent. But he can’t do that if he keeps sinking into his own debilitating malaise, weighed down by his shortcomings and an unwillingness to address them.”

11. The N.Y. Daily News, August 3. Ouch.

10. People, July 31. Even People can’t keep their coverage of the Trump family light and frothy.

9. The New York Post, July 28. First they came out with this hilarious cover in response to the chaos and frequent firings and resignations in the White House. It perfectly reflects the cut-throat, reality TV environment we’ve seen since the day of the inauguration.

Shortly after, they had to update it when Reince Priebus, the former White House chief of staff, got fired. For a searchable archive of New York Post covers, click here.

8. Der Spiegel, August 14. Edel Rodriguez strikes again in the wake of Charlottesville. To buy an individual copy of this or other issues of Der Spiegel, click here.

7. Here’s another one of Rodriguez’s magazine covers from earlier this year.

6. Time, May 29. This stunning magazine cover shows the White House morphing in to St. Basil’s Cathedral from Russia’s Red Square. Inside was a story on White House staff frantically trying to handle the Russia-related scandals of the Trump administration.

5. Der Spiegel, April 22.

4. Der Spiegel, March 8, 2017.

3. The New Yorker, Feb 13, 2017.

2. Der Spiegel, Dec. 12, 2016.

1. The NY Daily News, February 16, 2016.

While Donald Trump hangs a framed fake issue of Time, President Barack Obama made the cover many times without inspiring scathing political cartoons.

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Featured image: CC BY 2.0 Gage Skidmore via Flickr with cut out and background images of magazine covers applied.