President Donald Trump, a man who somehow hasn’t been impeached yet, sits in the Oval Office on May 12, 2017 (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Have you seen that 1977 Time magazine cover proclaiming that you need to prepare for the coming Ice Age? It’s popular on right wing sites that claim climate change is a hoax. But the magazine cover itself is 100 percent fake. Good thing nobody printed it off and showed it to the president though, right?




Yes, according to Politico, Trump’s staff regularly prints articles from the internet and hands them to the president. Sometimes, they hand him internet hoaxes that they believe are real—which explains so much.

Hoax magazine cover purporting to be from 1977 (left), actual Time magazine cover from 2008 (right)


In the case of that fake 1977 Time magazine cover about a coming Ice Age, it was handed to Trump by K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser. Allow me to repeat that if you missed it the first time: The deputy national security advisor, one of the most powerful people to have the ear of the president, is handing Trump internet hoaxes printed from the internet.



On the campaign trail, Trump was fond of just printing things off the internet and holding them up as signs at his many rallies. And using bullshit information found on the web seems to have found its way into the White House. None of this is a huge surprise, obviously. But it’s still fucking terrifying.



From Politico:

[Trump] uses the Internet minimally, other than tweeting and tracking his mentions, so what other news stories he sees can be more haphazard. Trump does receive a daily binder of news clippings put together his communications team, but White House officials disagreed about how much he reads those. White House and former campaign aides have tried to make sure Trump’s media diet includes regular doses of praise and positive stories to keep his mood up–a tactic honed by staff during the campaign to keep him from tweeting angrily.


Politico cites four unnamed sources familiar with the Time magazine incident and says that “Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it.”

Good thing this guy has the codes to our nukes. He’s basically one Facebook meme away from launching World War III.


[Politico]