Time magazine’s latest Trump cover is, literally, fire

Between accusations of being a liar, liar, pants on fire and Michael Wolff’s new bestseller Fire and Fury, which looks at the mayhem in the White House, it seems fitting that President Donald Trump’s latest appearance on Time magazine’s cover is, quite literally, a fiery one.

While Time has certainly gotten creative as to how it portrays Trump on its cover, the simplicity of the new cover, created by Edel Rodriguez, is masterful, especially in how it gets across its central message: the first year of the Trump administration has been an epic, chaotic fire.

The story that accompanies the cover is a thorough overview of the most recent chaos in the White House as well as a look at Wolff’s book through the lens of revisiting the president’s first year (though it’s hard to cram all of that tumult into one magazine feature).

But Time does us one better by chatting with the cover’s creator, Edel Rodriguez, who’s done a number of Trump-related covers for Time and other publications.

In the chat, Rodriguez confirms that the flames refer both to Wolff’s book and Trump’s infamous threat towards North Korea (“fire and fury like the world has never seen”). But Rodriquez says the flames also represent the never-ending chaos coming from the White House on a daily basis.

“We used to live where the United States was a pretty steady country, and now you wake up every day and try to figure out where’s the next fire, where do we have to go, what do we have to try to contain,” Rodriguez says. “It’s sort of this President that you’re always trying to contain, like a wildfire that’s moving from one place to the other at all times.”

Fair enough. You have to wonder what Trump’s reaction will be given the kerfuffle over his claims he was going to be the magazine’s Person of the Year in 2017 — but turned the honor down — and that time Steve Bannon made the cover, landing him in hot water with Trump.

For what it’s worth, the flames show no sign of being smothered any time soon.