FAKE NEWS

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Twitter Spent Friday Night Dragging Donald Trump for His Pathetically Questionable Time Person of the Year Claim

Even Time took the time to tweet that “the President is incorrect.”


U.S.-PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS-TRUMP-FILE
Xinhua News Agency via Getty

In the latest evidence that Donald Trump more closely resembles a middle schooler than someone who should be the President of United States—the White House staff has now been serving him two scoops of ice cream while everyone else gets one for months—on Friday night, Trump claimed on Twitter what was essentially the equivalent of an unexperienced teen boy telling his friends, “Of course I’ve kissed plenty of girls, but it was at camp over the summer so you wouldn’t know them.”

Having apparently found out some unwelcome news, or simply realized his prospects at taking home the title that he’s the only person to really care about , Trump tweeted that “Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named ‘Man (Person) of the Year,’ like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!”

Trump, apparently, had forgotten that the internet is already used to his fake news when it comes to Time: He caused a minor firestorm earlier this year about the accolade, too, when it was reported that he kept framed, fake magazine covers of himself winning the award in no less than four of his golf clubs—all much kinder Photoshops than the two instances than the covers that ran when Trump actually did score the cover, in 1989 and 2016.

That incident prompted a spokesperson for the magazine to tell the Washington Post that she could “confirm that this is not a real Time cover,” but this time around, the magazine did not waste time or mince words in issuing their own statement that pointed out that Trump’s was actually fake news—never mind that it was 8:30 p.m. on the Friday of a holiday weekend. “The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6,” the magazine said in a tweet that hundreds of thousands have likes and retweeted in the hours since.

Trump’s tweet was so glaringly pathetic, however, that by the time Time responded a few hours later, a wave of parodies had already begun sweeping across Twitter, starting with the tennis player Andy Murray, who copied Trump’s tweet almost word for word, changing to the BBC offering him “sports personality of the year.” Others were, of course, quick on the uptake, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Billy Eichner, the latter of which came up with an entire thread that seemed to more accurately convey Trump’s desperation:

It’s something of a mystery why Time‘s title means so much to Trump, since it’s not necessarily a good thing; last year, when Time itself called its choice of Trump “for better or for worse,” the internet was quick to point out that Adolf Hitler had also won the award back in 1938—the year before he invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland.

In fact, given his apparent obsession with the award, one would think Trump would know its correct terminology rather than saying “Man (Person) of the Year,” though he might actually have been onto something with that mistake. When you take the growingly despicable track record of men in power this year into account, we might as well throw Trump a bone and give him the “Man of the Year” title, since he definitely deserves to win the prize during a year when despicable men dominated the news. Or he could take the “Toilet Bigot” cover that Rob Delaney tweeted Time‘s CEO would surely offer him.

Related: Donald Trump Even Messed Up the Fake Time Magazine Cover He Created to Boost His Ego

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