The Economist Did Not Publish a Cover Showing Trump And Putin in an Apocalyptic Scene
The Claim
A cover of The Economist magazine depicting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin against an apocalyptic background.
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A cover of The Economist magazine depicting Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin against an apocalyptic background went viral on X claiming that it was a recent cover for the American magazine. The cover depicted U.S. and Russian presidents against the background of rockets and a sky red from explosions.
According to the users who shared the claim, the seemingly main theme of the cover is that the West's permission for Ukraine to launch long-range strikes deep into Russia is "the beginning of the Third World War."
An X user shared the cover saying:“The Economist warms up the audience with apocalyptic images. But what does Trump have to do with it if Biden's gang is starting a nuclear war? Apparently, this is what they are going to leave Trump as an inheritance.”
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar investigated the viral cover and found it to be fake. The Economist did not publish the viral cover.
Fake Cover Not Found on the Economist’s Site or Accounts
Misbar’s team searched for the viral cover on The Economist’s archive for the magazine’s weekly covers but found no similar cover.
Misbar’s team also searched through The Economist’s social media accounts but found no such cover either.
The cover could be noted to be unauthentic upon some analysis. The cover misses the publication date of the weekly, which appears on all authentic copies of The Economist.
Furthermore, there are some typos in the words written on the cover. The cover says “America pumbed-up economy,” while it should be “America's pumped-up economy.”
The second headline, “Times up for TikTok” also contains a typo, as it misses an apostrophe for possessive form, and should be, “Time's up for TikTok.”
The fourth headline is “A special report on oil industy” also has a typo in “industy” word, and the sentence lacks an article before the same word. It should be: “A special report on the oil industry.”
Such typos and grammatical mistakes are unlikely in a publication with over 40 editors.
Finally, Misbar’s team ran the cover on an AI software detector called Hive, which concluded that the image is “likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content,” indicating an 83.4% likelihood of being AI-generated.
Trump Is Open To Discuss Ceasefire Deal with Trump
Vladimir Putin is open to discussing a ceasefire deal with Donald Trump but without making any major concessions, Reuters reported in an exclusive article according to five sources with knowledge of Kremlin thinking.
Putin would accept to freeze the conflict along the front lines, with room to negotiate over the carve-up of the four eastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
According to Reuters’ sources, Russia may also be open to withdrawing from the relatively small patches of territory it holds in the Kharkiv and Mykolaiv regions, in the north and south of Ukraine.
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