President Trump beheads Lady Liberty on the new cover of German magazine Der Spiegel


If anyone was wondering what Der Spiegel, a German counterpart to magazines like Newsweek, Time, or — ahem! — The Week, thinks of President Trump, wonder no more.
The magazine debuted its latest cover illustration Saturday, and it did not exactly opt for subtlety. In a commentary clearly directed at President Trump's executive order suspending all U.S. entrance from seven majority-Muslim nations — which is presently in legal limbo — Trump is shown immediately after he has beheaded Lady Liberty. The caption: "America first."
The illustration is the work of Cuban-born Edel Rodriguez, who arrived in the United States as a political refugee three decades ago. "It's a beheading of democracy, a beheading of a sacred symbol," Rodriguez told The Washington Post. "I don't want to live in a dictatorship," he added. "If I wanted to live in a dictatorship, I'd live in Cuba, where it's much warmer."
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Trump was previously depicted beheading Lady Liberty by the New York Daily News, and the most recent New Yorker cover depicts the statue's eternal torch flaming out. The Der Spiegel cover has sparked debate across Europe and the United States, with the German vice president of the European Parliament labeling it "tasteless."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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