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Did the president’s vanity and knack for vengeance influence Time’s latest cover?
President Donald Trump went from balding and crepe-necked to stern and statesman-like on Time magazine’s new cover released this week.
“TRUMP’S WORLD,” screamed the headline with a flattering straight-on photo of Trump with his hands clasped at his chin.
What a difference a grievance and a week or so make.
Trump railed against Times’ cover photo of him released Oct. 13, going to conspiracy-mongering lengths to criticize the low angle.
Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time,” Trump wrote on Truth Social then. “They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?”
The Daily Beast surmised that the new dignified image was an effort to appease Trump by Time’s “MAGA curious billionaire” owner, Marc Benioff, “whose attempts to embrace the Trump agenda have angered associates.”
One popular comment on Time’s Instagram leaned heavily into such thinking.
“One day, maybe decades from today, this cover will be in history books, when describing the compromise of Free Press in a chapter detailing a nation’s rise to fascism,” an observer wrote.
