If it’s true the media “created” Donald Trump, look to the New York tabloids. From the sexy and the salacious to the parochial and, now, presidential, Trump has made the cover of the New York Daily News and New York Post dozens of times since his early days as an attention-hungry real estate mogul in the 1980s—his lavish lifestyle, multiple wives and divorces, and businesses successes and failures providing near-constant fodder for the gossip pages. For Politico Magazine’s Media Issue, we compiled the definitive collection of the very best Trump covers from the Post and the Daily News—nearly 100 in total.



From Trump’s affair with Marla Maples (“How Suite It Was!”) to his political rise (“Teflon Don!”), these covers tell the story of his cultivation of the press beginning more than three decades ago in New York. On February 11, 1990, the day Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in prison, the Daily News opted for Trump on its cover; the gossip writer Liz Smith had just gotten the scoop that his marriage with his first wife, Ivana, was on the rocks. A flurry of Trump coverage followed, including eight consecutive front pages of the New York Post in the days ahead. “Papers like the Daily News and the New York Post were selling an extra thirty thousand copies whenever they splashed the Trump story across their front pages,” Trump wrote in 1990. “In view of the money they were making off Ivana’s and my problems, they weren’t about to let the story drop.”



That appears to have been the case for many years to come, with more tabloid covers marking Trump’s books, failed business deals, TV reality show and finally his presidential bid. If Trump is a made man, it was perhaps the tabloids that did the making.

Tabloids courtesy of the Library of Congress, New York Post