Jonathan Ernst TPX / Reuters

A deputy national security adviser to President Trump reportedly handed him — in all seriousness — a hoax Time magazine cover, Politico reported Monday, citing four White House sources. K.T. McFarland reportedly gave Trump a printout of two Time covers — one, which was supposedly from the 1970s, warned of a coming ice age, while the other, from 2008, was about global warming. It was supposed to be an example of mainstream media hypocrisy concerning climate change. Shane Goldmacher, Politico's chief White House correspondent, then reported: "Trump quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy. But there was a problem. The 1970s cover was fake, part of an Internet hoax that’s circulated for years. Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it."

The Time cover from 1977 is a hoax that has been widely shared and was debunked in 2013. Bryan Walsh, writing for Time, has reported: "The cover on the right is real. (I should know — I wrote the story about China and India that’s mentioned in the subhead.) The one on the left is very much not. It’s a doctored version of this cover, from 2007:"