NEW YORK (AP) - This is a Donald Trump story that a certain someone might label “fake news.”
It all started Friday when son Eric Trump tweeted “Trump Magazine 2018 #HotOffThePress” above a photo of the cover of a publication titled, you guessed it, “Trump,” featuring the family’s Washington, D.C., hotel.
Twitter lit up, with several people mentioning Trump’s earlier failed magazine efforts - “Trump Style” and “Trump World” - and others making snarky references to still other collapsed ventures. “Does this magazine come with a coupon to Trump University?” asked one.
The British newspaper The Guardian piled on with a Q&A titled, “The re-re-re-re-relaunched Trump magazine.” Time magazine published an online story titled, “It looks like Trump Magazine is Back.”
There’s only one problem: The publication isn’t new and isn’t a real magazine at all, just an in-house publication touting Trump Organization properties around the world. Eric Trump is the company’s executive vice president.
“The publication is a promotional piece developed for our owners, members and guests,” the Trump Organization said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “It is not intended for general public distribution.”
As of Monday morning, the latest copy of “Trump” didn’t seem to be reaching even that smaller hotel audience.
A scan of the lobby at the Trump International Hotel and Tower overlooking Central Park in Manhattan turned up no copies, with requests for it eliciting a quizzical look from a staffer near the front desk.
“Take that one,” he said, pointing to a weathered copy of the 2017 version of “Trump” featuring the president’s golf club in Ireland on the cover.
“Trump” was created, or so readers are told on page 5 of the 2017 edition, for “Trump aficionados” to stay abreast of all the “incredible things we are doing around the world.”
Inside that edition are photos of the company’s two Scottish golf resorts, a ribbon cutting of the Trump hotel and residential tower in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Serena Williams at the opening of a tennis court at a Trump resort in Sterling, Virginia. Its cover bears the tagline: “Live Luxury, Never Settle.”
The Trump Organization didn’t immediately respond to a request for a copy of the latest edition.
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