Time magazine has a request for the Trump Organization: pull down the phony Time cover of Trump that hangs on the walls at Trump’s golf clubs.
The fake copy of Time is dated March 1, 2009, and shows Trump on the cover with the headline: “Donald Trump: The ‘Apprentice’ is a television smash!” Above the Time nameplate: “TRUMP IS HITTING ON ALL FRONTS . . . EVEN TV!”
But there was no March 1, 2009, issue of Time. As a matter of fact, until his presidential run in 2015, Trump was on the cover of Time only once, in January 1989.
Kerri Chyka, a spokeswoman for Time Inc., told The Washington Post, “I can confirm that this is not a real TIME cover.”
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders would not comment when asked whether Trump had known the cover wasn’t real, only answering, “We couldn’t comment on the decor at Trump golf clubs one way or another.”
March 1, 2009, was the season debut of Trump’s show The Celebrity Apprentice, in which celebrities sold cupcakes and Trump fired comedian Andrew Dice Clay.
Some real news was added to the fake cover to make it look real, including stories regarding President Barack Obama, climate change and the financial crisis.
The cover hung in Trump’s resort in Doral, Florida, outside Miami; in Virginia, in the member’s dining room at the Trump golf course in suburban Loudoun County, and reportedly at Trump’s golf resort in Doonbeg, in western Ireland, as photos posted on TripAdvisor reveal.
At Trump’s Turnberry club in Scotland, employees said they had seen the fake cover. One employee confessed, “We used to have a Time Magazine cover up — aye, it was there for ages and ages, as long as I’ve been here. I know the one you’re on about. But they came and took it down a while back.”
Trump boasted, “I think we have the all-time record in the history of Time Magazine,” during a January speech at CIA headquarters, but he was wrong; Richard Nixon made many more appearances.