With its iconic red border and instantly recognizable branding, Time magazine has long held a place in the public imagination. That same visual familiarity has also made it a popular target for digital manipulation, with fake covers often featuring high-profile public figures.
One such example is a cover that purportedly showed Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney flipping off U.S. President Donald Trump, accompanied by the phrase "Hey, Donald." The image was completely fabricated, created using AI or digital editing tools, and never appeared in any official publication. A similar case involved an AI-generated image of Trump wearing a crown with the phrase "Long live the king," which was shared by official White House accounts, but was never published by Time.
Other fabricated Time magazine covers drew from real-world tensions. For instance, a viral image compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler on what appeared to be a Time cover. However, the image was actually created by an artist who later clarified he "never, ever intended for people to think it was real. It was a piece of artwork that many others saved, reposted without mentioning the fact that it was art, not a legitimate cover, and it spread like wildfire." In another case, a fake cover changed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's name to "Ladimir Elensky." It alluded to the bans of public displays of the letters "Z" and "V," symbols of support for Russia's military during its invasion of Ukraine, in some countries.
Meanwhile, Trump has also been at the center of several fake Time magazine covers. One of its alleged versions claimed the magazine labeled Trump the "Best President" or the "Liar in Chief." In reality, the magazine never published either. Trump himself has even displayed fake Time covers at several of his resorts, promoting his television show "The Apprentice." The magazine later requested these be removed.
Below, in no particular order, are 10 Time magazine covers fact-checked by Snopes, most of which turned out to be entirely fabricated.
