The Trump Era Is Over - But How Did It Happen? Are The Media To Blame? A New Book Curates His Rise In Pictures
How did Donald Trump make it to the White House? Are the print press to blame? A new book detailing 40 years of Donald Trump’s newspaper and magazine covers tells the whole story.By Ben Arogundade. Feb 1, 2021.
THE END HAS COME. These vintage news covers from ‘TIME’ and ‘New York’ are among 240 featured in the new book, ‘Fake Views? The Donald Trump Book Of Covers’, by author Ben Arogundade.
DONALD J. TRUMP IS GONE, but the analysis continues. Political pundits and commentators are lining up to offer their opinions, while authors are preparing a host of new books that aim to summarise Trump’s tumultuous tenure.
TRUMP LEGACY BOOK IS READY
One such Trump legacy book is, 'Fake Views? The Donald Trump Book Of Covers’. It presents the illustrated story of President Donald J. Trump’s rise from real estate mogul to the White House, told through a unique collection of 240 of his front covers, from 1979 to the present. Witness Trump depicted as the anti-Christ, Adolf Hitler, The Joker, a Ku Klux Klansman, a terrorist, a psychopath, a narcissist and a sexual predator, to name but a few.
PRESIDENT TRUMP NEWS COVERS
The two covers shown above, published in 2017, and which feature in the book, seem prophetic in their narratives about President Trump’s fate. The ‘TIME’ cover (May 22, 2017), echoes 27th US President William Howard Taft’s statement that the White House is “the loneliest place in the world.” The front page shows Trump walking away along its hallowed corridors, his head slightly bowed, a solitary silhouette illuminated by the overhead lights. Despite all the attention, the staff, advisors and family members surrounding him, at the end of it all, he is alone with the responsibility for the complex, thankless task that is being president. What does he think now that he realises that the role he’s talked about wanting since the 1980s has been more challenging, more frustrating and more terrifying than he’d ever imagined?
TRUMP – THE END
The cover of ‘New York’ magazine (June 26-July 9, 2017) was published just five months into the Trump Presidency. Writer Frank Rich examined how Donald Trump’s administration compared to that of disgraced former President Richard Nixon. The cover’s photo-illustration, by Bobby Doherty, fantasies about an early end to the billionaire’s tumultuous reign, placing the president in Nixon’s famous goodbye pose from the White House lawn following his dramatic resignation on August 9, 1974. In the end of course, Trump bowed out in more dramatic fashion than this, with his supporters storming the Capitol building, and the disgrace of a second impeachment trial. One thing is for sure — the story of America’s 45 president, the most shocking of all time, will be studied, written about and scrutinised more than any other in the country’s history.
'Fake Views? The Donald Trump Book Of Covers' is out now.
240 Covers - The Definitive Visual Record Of Trump’s Reign
After eight years in the White House, the legacy of the USA’s first African American president is still being debated and defined. Were the media’s portrayals of him and his achievements accurate, or did they get it wrong?
