WHEN Donald Trump announced that he was running for president in June 2015, he was dismissed as a joke. By the time we first featured him on the cover of The Economist three months later, though we took a rather playful approach to the art, it was becoming clear Mr Trump was being taken seriously by a significant proportion of Republican voters. And as we warned our readers “it would be a terrible thing if Mr Trump became the nominee for the party of Lincoln and Reagan”, we too recognised his increasing significance in the primary races.

Even so, at that point it would have taken a stretch of imagination to foresee Mr Trump winning the Republican Party’s nomination. Yet fully 13 months and eight covers hence—though he finds himself trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls and weathering the storm from one of the most damaging controversies to hit is campaign so far—Mr Trump is still a worryingly serious contender for the big job with less than four weeks to go until election night itself.

On that alarming note, our cover this week once more features Mr Trump. Mirroring the first 2015 outing, we’ve made a return to the irreverent approach, but with no less sombre a message in our accompanying pieces. Predictions that Mr Trump would not get this far were wrong. It would be unwise to guess how many more times he might feature on our front pages in the future.

Browse all nine covers below:

Sep 5th 2015:

Dec 12th 2015:

Jan 30th 2016:

Feb 27th 2016:

Mar 5th 2016:

May 7th 2016:

Jul 16th 2016:

Sep 10th 2016: