Fake news? How about fake magazine covers.
President Donald Trump, who regularly blasts major news outlets like CNN as “fake news,” has been caught in a fake controversy of his own.
On Tuesday, The Washington Post uncovered that the Trump Organization’s golf clubs in America and Europe have been displaying a fake Time magazine cover featuring the president.
The phony cover depicts Trump with the headline: “Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!”
A spokesperson for Time confirmed to the news outlet that the March 1, 2009 cover is a phony. The date coincides with the eighth season premiere of Trump’s reality TV show, “Celebrity Apprentice.”
The fake Time cover hanging in Trump properties has small but telling mistakes https://t.co/2zQLBvMFkH pic.twitter.com/HyzfPgoRR0
— Post Politics (@postpolitics) June 27, 2017
Update: And now Time has asked Trump’s businesses to take down the faux covers, per The Washington Post…
UPDATE: @time has asked the @realdonaldtrump's businesses to remove the phony magazine covers from their walls. https://t.co/beJXOTrevb
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) June 27, 2017
The Post reported that the framed cover has been seen in at least four of the company’s golf clubs, including one resort in Scotland where it was taken down a few weeks ago. According to employees who spoke with the Post, no explanation was given as to why it was removed from display.
It was Kate Winslet, not Trump, who graced the March 2, 2009 cover. Both the real cover and the fake feature secondary headlines for stories (real) about President Barack Obama and the financial crisis.
A Post reporter who recently visited one of the properties knew something was off when they noticed the red border on the Trump cover was thinner than other Time covers. Additionally, the secondary headlines are positioned on the right side — on a real Time cover, they are situated across the top.
The Trump Organization did not respond to the Post’s request for comment on why the fake cover is displayed prominently in their properties. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders declined to say whether the president had known the cover wasn’t real.
“We couldn’t comment on the decor at Trump Golf clubs one way or another,” she wrote in an email to the Post.
Trump made his debut as Time cover-boy for its Jan. 16, 1989 issue and didn’t reappear until the Aug. 31, 2015 issue, two months after he declared his presidential run. Time named him Person of the Year for end of year issue in 2016.