‘Der Spiegel’ sparks furor with Trump beheading Liberty cover
The German weekly magazine Der Spiegel sparked controversy at home and abroad on Saturday with a front cover illustration of US President Donald Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty.
It depicts a cartoon figure of Trump with a bloodied knife in one hand and the statue’s head, dripping with blood, in the other. It carries the caption: “America First.”
The artist who designed the cover, Edel Rodriguez, a Cuban who came to the United States in 1980 as a political refugee, told The Washington Post: “It’s a beheading of democracy, a beheading of a sacred symbol.”
The cover set off a debate on Twitter and in German and international media, with Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, a member of Germany’s Free Democratic Party and vice president of the European Parliament, describing it as “tasteless.”
The cover follows a series of attacks on Berlin’s policies by Trump and his aides, marking a rapid deterioration in German relations with the United States. Chancellor Angela Merkel was the go-to European ally for former US president Barack Obama, who praised her as “an outstanding partner.”
Last month, Trump said Merkel had made a “catastrophic mistake” with her open-door migration policy, and this week his top trade adviser said Germany was using a “grossly undervalued” euro to gain advantage over the United States and its European partners.
No one was available for comment on the Spiegel cover at the US Embassy in Berlin.
Also on Friday, a German tourist attraction that features miniature models of various parts of the world put up a wall around the United States, in a dig at Trump’s plan to build a full-sized one on the border with Mexico.
The display at Miniature Wonderland, which Trip Advisor rates as the top destination in the city of Hamburg, is a hit with tourists, including some from the US, who are usually drawn by its vast model railway.
Visitors on Friday could be seen peering over a miniature concrete wall topped with razor wire to look at sites such as a tiny Mount Rushmore and a Las Vegas skyline.