Time’s decision to debut a new August 2024 cover that lacks any of the iconic images or headlines detailing the attempted assassination of the former president that its original front page communicated is raising eyebrows. The change suspiciously lined up with anonymous corporate media complaints that Donald Trump and his 2024 campaign are benefitting from circulation of the viral photos of the event.
The corporate media magazine announced an August 2024 issue cover featuring a bloodied Trump fist-pumping after surviving an attempted assassination on July 14 — less than 24 hours after The Associated Press’s Evan Vucci captured the iconic image at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. The Trump cover was the second one proposed for the August 5 issue.
Just four days later, on July 18, however, Time had not only pushed the triumphant Trump photo aside as the pinned post on its X page but completely reframed its August 2024 issue to adopt Democrats’ and their media allies’ faux calls to lower the temperature and put out the partisan fire they spent years stoking.
The new cover features a black-and-white still of the emptied rally stands at the Butler Farm Show Grounds. Superimposed above the scene stained with evidence of chaos and panic is a full-color American flag and the words “What Unites Us.”
The accompanying link to the cover photo posted to Time’s social media timeline takes readers to an article by the magazine’s former editor-in-chief Nancy Gibbs, who claims she knows “How America Can Still Come Together.”
The cover change comes mere days after a July 15 report from Axios claiming that several unnamed corporate media photographers are “worried” iconic photos of a bullet-grazed Trump raising a clenched hand in front of the American flag “could turn into a kind of ‘photoganda,’ with the Trump campaign using them to further their agenda despite the photographers’ intent of capturing a news event.”
“Another photographer who has freelanced for major publications worried that the photo would become ‘a propaganda machine,’ with the image itself making Trump ‘a martyr,’” the publication noted.
None of the anonymous reporters went on the record to air their complaints, but Axios printed their belief that Vucci’s historic photo had become a “kind of free P.R. for Trump” that is too “dangerous” to amplify “despite how good it is.”
When The Federalist pressed Time about the drastic tone shift featured on the front page of its August 2024 cover and asked whether it was related to the concerns printed by Axios, a spokeswoman claimed that “TIME regularly publishes multiple covers for each print issue.”
It is not unheard of for Time to issue multiple cover options for the same issue in big news months. The spokeswoman, however, refused to answer questions about how often Time releases multiple covers for the same issue. She also wouldn’t say how the outlet decides which of those covers get distributed for resale.
“Both the ‘Attack on Trump’ cover and the ‘What Unites Us’ cover are scheduled to be printed with the Aug. 5 TIME magazine,” the spokeswoman confirmed to The Federalist. She did not specify how many of the copies sent to third-party sellers would have the Trump-focused front page instead of the black-and-white cover.
The AP photographer who captured the iconic image did not immediately respond to The Federalist’s request for comment. In an interview with Time on the same day Axios published its anonymously sourced report, however, Vucci claimed that “how people view the images and how they market it, and how they use it for their own point of views, that’s none of my concern.”
“My concern is that when that incident happened, I felt like I did a really good job showing you a key moment in American history,” he said.
