‘Time’ Releases Footage Of Bald Eagle Attacking Donald Trump, As Media Continues To Turn Against Him

In August this year, Donald Trump appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. The photographs, taken by award-winning portrait photographer Martin Schoeller, featured a be-suited, gold-topped Trump hanging in his Trump Tower office with a 27-year-old bald eagle named Uncle Sam; the cover — published at a time when many outlets were being urged to ignore the sexist, racist tycoon as he began establishing himself as an actual threat — was published with the headline ‘Deal with it.’; and the story, written by Michael Scherer, profiled Trump’s campaign, controversies, and confrontations. 

“If you want to understand what is happening in the country right now, to get at its shifting id, its calcifying frustrations, its guttural demand for change,” Scherer wrote, “you need only listen to that message of disgust, for the political system, its falsehoods and failures, which has taken Trump to the top of the Republican polls.”

That cover story may be five months old, but it’s regained relevancy today in the aftermath of Time’s Person Of The Year announcement: a title which goes to someone that “for better or for worse … has done the most to influence the events of the year”. Overnight, the top honours for 2015 went to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Donald Trump came third — one spot behind Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the so-called Islamic State, and one spot ahead of #BlackLivesMatter.

Trump wasn’t happy.

I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015

To celebrate the announcement — or perhaps to add insult to injury — Time followed-up their Person Of The Year announcement with a far more clickable piece: a hitherto-unreleased behind-the-scenes clip of the fateful cover shoot in August.

The eagle did not like him at all.

If you like reading too much into these kinds of things, the timing of the clip’s release could speak volumes. Back in 2014, when the shoot happened, Donald Trump’s ascension seemed just far enough away to make the whole thing seem outrageous and hilarious. But now, as Trump solidifies his (albeit tenuous) position as the leading Republican nominee — during a campaign in which he has exhibited blatant misogyny; repeatedly called Mexicans rapists; lied consistently; and lobbied for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” — the media that covered him with such glee for the last few years has begun to backpedal, disown and discredit.

Editor: “I dare you to do it.” Picture Desk: “I can’t, people will notice.” Editor: “Pay you $20?” Picture Desk: pic.twitter.com/VLrK2384Ba

— Carl Anka (@Ankaman616) December 8, 2015

Yesterday, the editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed, Ben Smith, sent a memo to all employees. “We’ve gotten a question or two about … whether calling him, say, a liar and a racist violates our policy asking that you not be political partisans on social media,” he wrote. Like many other news outlets, Buzzfeed’s social media policy dictates that staff refrain from partisanship in their public channels, in fear it could undermine the work of reporters. But, Smith said, “Trump is operating far outside the political campaigns to which those guidelines usually apply.”

“It is, for instance, entirely fair to call him a mendacious racist, as the politics team and others here have reported clearly and aggressively: He’s out there saying things that are false, and running an overtly anti-Muslim campaign. BuzzFeed News’s reporting is rooted in facts, not opinion; these are facts… There’s nothing partisan about accurately describing Donald Trump.”

Here's a memo I sent to @buzzfeed staff today on our social media policy, and Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/zCiDds3C29

— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) December 9, 2015

The memo comes after a post by Huffington Post’s Ariana Huffington on Monday, which reversed the outlet’s July positioning that all their Trump campaign coverage would be filed to the entertainment section, instead of to the politics section. (“Our reason is simple,” they wrote at the time: “Trump’s campaign is a sideshow.”)

But according to Huffington, “the ‘can you believe he said that?’ novelty has curdled and congealed into something repellent and threatening,” presenting actual danger to the country and its citizens. “By not calling out Trump’s campaign for what it is, many in the media, addicted to the ratings buzz he continues to deliver, have been legitimizing his ugly views,” Huffington said.

“So we will no longer be covering his campaign in Entertainment. But that’s not to say we’ll be treating it as if it were a normal campaign,” she wrote. “… If Trump’s words and actions are racist, we’ll call them racist. If they’re sexist, we’ll call them sexist. We won’t shrink from the truth or be distracted by the showmanship.”

Overnight, The Guardian also published an editorial slamming Donald Trump’s Islamophobic comments as representing “no sense of decency” and “a total breach with America’s past”; in November, the New York Times published an editorial called ‘Mr. Trump’s Applause Lies‘, which called on the mainstream media to hold him to account for his “racist lies”; a week ago, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank published a column titled ‘Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist‘; in August, the same paper published an editorial titled ‘Donald Trump is an aimless, angry leader‘; and the Daily News’ editions in Philadelphia and New York has been ripping into him consistently all year.

As the American election swiftly approaches, it’s clear that the media’s honeymoon with the clickbait troll is well and truly over. (Well, most of the media.)

These strongly-worded editorials are as belated as they are urgent, but Time’s release of a long-held clip — a clip which shows a bigoted, racist, misogynist nominee being attacked by a bald eagle literally named Uncle Sam — does a great job of discrediting him, too.