President Trump is depicted holding the severed, bleeding head of the Statue of Liberty on the cover of Friday’s edition of Der Spiegel, a German news magazine.
Mr. Trump’s likeness is seen brandishing a bloody knife in one hand and the head of Lady Liberty in the other alongside the words: “America First.”
The cover design was illustrated by Edel Rodriguez, a Havana-born artist whose work whose previous clients include the U.S. Postal Service, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, among others, according to his website.
“It’s a beheading of democracy, a beheading of a sacred symbol,” Mr. Rodriguez told The Washington Post about the illustration. “And clearly, lately, what’s associated with beheadings is ISIS, so there’s a comparison” between the Islamic State and Trump.
“Both sides are extremists, so I’m just making a comparison between them,” he told The Post.
The artwork accompanies a cover story written by Der Spiegel’s Washington correspondent, Gordon Repinski, involving the Trump administration and particularly his chief strategist, Steve Bannon.
“There is a power vacuum in many ministries because old employees have had to leave, but new ones have not yet started. How Trump’s inner circles look and function, how great the uncertainty among the government officials is, describes the title story,” reads an English translation of an article previewing the piece.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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