If you crack the cover of TIME magazine you can claim to have made it.

Donald Trump certainly has made it, although (shock) his claims about exactly how often he has adorned the cover don’t hold up so well against the, um, truth.

Trump claims that he ‘graced’ two covers before he decided to run for president, but in actual fact it was only one.

Rolling Stone with the rather embarrassing oversight:

A framed, fake cover of Time Magazine featuring President Donald Trump has been prominently hung and displayed in at least four of Trump’s golf clubs…

The Washington Post uncovered the photoshopped image, which claims to be from the March 1st, 2009 issue of Time. The cover appears to celebrate his NBC reality competition show The Apprentice with the headline “Trump Is Hitting On All Fronts…Even TV!”

A reporter who viewed the image in one of the clubs noted that the red border was skinnier than a typical Time cover and the placement of the secondary headlines is incorrect – not to mention the presence of exclamation points in cover lines, which the historic magazine does not do.

On the left we have the actual cover, and on the right is the doctored version:

Well, that’s a little embarrassing.

The Trump Organisation, and employees of the golf clubs that featured a framed copy of the image, have yet to explain who created the fake cover or why.

That didn’t satisfy Gizmodo, who decided to do some digging:

As developer Jordan Merrick pointed out on Twitter, the barcode on the fake cover is assigned to a piece of karaoke DJ software that was on the market in 2009. And while there are other bits of evidence that prove the Trump Time cover is a fake, it’s difficult to figure out who made it, why they made it, and how Trump’s staff decided to hang the falsehood inside the billionaire’s golf clubs.

I’ve done my best to do some quick internet sleuthing, and the results suggest that this is all some weird internet satire project gone awry. A Google Image search of the fake Trump cover brings up a couple other fake Time covers with similar designs…

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote to the Post in an email, ““We couldn’t comment on the decor at Trump Golf clubs one way or another.” Sanders had a heated exchange with the White House press corps on Tuesday over her repeated accusations of “fake news.”

SAD.

Trump had an absolute field day yesterday as three CNN journalists resigned over a Russia – Trump story that made false claims (HERE), but take your pick from the multitude of times he has spoken falsely and you won’t find an apology in sight.

The man really is an embarrassment, but at least he looks good playing tennis:

That photo, taken back in 2000, can now haunt you too.

[sources:rollingstone&gizmodo]