'The Time cover he deserves': Julianne Moore, Kathy Griffin, and more react to powerful Trump immigration cover

Suzy Byrne
·Reporter
“This is how this despicable human being feels powerful”: Celebs react to<em> Time</em>‘s Trump <em>Welcome to America</em> cover. (Photo: Getty Images)
“This is how this despicable human being feels powerful”: Celebs react to Time‘s Trump Welcome to America cover. (Photo: Getty Images)

Unlike the fake Trump Time magazine covers in the president’s golf clubs, the magazine’s new cover — featuring the president being forced to face an immigrant child — is very real, and it’s all over the internet today.

For the first 240 years of U.S. history, at least, our most revered chief executives reliably articulated a set of high-minded, humanist values that bound together a diverse nation by naming what we aspired to: democracy, humanity, equality. The Enlightenment ideals Thomas Jefferson etched onto the Declaration of Independence were given voice by Presidents from George Washington to @barackobama. @realdonaldtrump doesn’t talk like that. In the 18 months since his Inauguration, #Trump has mentioned “democracy” fewer than 100 times, “equality” only 12 times and “human rights” just 10 times. The tallies, drawn from a searchable online agglomeration of 5 million of Trump’s words, contrast with his predecessors’: at the same point in his first term, #RonaldReagan had mentioned equality three times as often in recorded remarks, which included 48 references to human rights, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Trump embraces a different set of values. He speaks often of #patriotism, albeit in the narrow sense of military duty, or as the kind of loyalty test he’s made to #NFL players. He also esteems religious liberty and economic vitality. But America’s 45th President is “not doing what rhetoricians call that ‘transcendent move,'” says Mary E. Stuckey, a communications professor at Penn State University and author of Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity. Instead, with each passing month he is testing anew just how far from our founding humanism his “America first” policies can take us. And over the past two months on our southern border, we have seen the result. Read this week's full cover story on TIME.com. TIME Photo-Illustration. Girl: @jbmoorephoto—@gettyimages; Trump: Thierry Charlier—@afpphoto/@gettyimages, @olivierdouliery—Pool/@gettyimages; animation by @brobeldesign

A post shared by TIME (@time) on Jun 21, 2018 at 5:16am PDT

Julianne Moore, Kathy Griffin, Katie Holmes, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Laura Dern are just a few of the celebrities who have shared the powerful image, which features a photo of a 2-year-old Honduran girl crying as her mother was being detained in McAllen, Tex. Although Donald Trump finally signed an executive order to stop ripping apart the immigrant families, and first lady Melania made a cameo at one of the detainment centers, what happens to the more than 2,000 being held is unclear — and there is a general fury about it all.

Actress Moore described it as “the @time cover he deserves” and urged her followers to “vote.”

The @time cover he deserves. #VOTE

A post shared by Julianne Moore (@juliannemoore) on Jun 21, 2018 at 8:07am PDT

Singer Vanessa Carlton wrote, “This is how this despicable human being feels powerful.”

This is how this despicable human being feels powerful.

A post shared by V a n e s s a C a r l t o n (@vanessacarltonactual) on Jun 21, 2018 at 7:40am PDT

Comedian Griffin shared it with a message about the sad state of our country under the president’s leadership.

Top Chef‘s Padma Lakshmi shared it with a quote from another story about the horrors of the situation.

Actress Olivia Wilde reminded her followers that with the thousands of kids still detained apart from their parents, “This is far from over.

And songstress Cyndi Lauper reminded people that “this is not ok.”

This is not ok. This is not OUR America.

A post shared by Cyndi Lauper (@cyndilauper) on Jun 21, 2018 at 8:49am PDT

Many people have shared it without comment too because it’s just so powerful that it speaks for itself — Holmes, Ellen Page, and Kelly Osbourne included.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John Moore, who works for Getty Images, talked about snapping the photo of the child, which has become a well-circulated symbol of the immigration debate in the United States. “This one was tough for me,” said the photog, who regularly photographs immigrants crossing the border. “As soon as it was over, they were put into a van. I had to stop and take deep breaths. All I wanted to do was pick her up. But I couldn’t.”

Trump, of course, is obsessed with Time magazine — and not just because he paid one of his employees to create a fake Time cover, with his likeness, that he hung in at least five of his golf courses. Last year, he claimed he was asked to be the mag’s person of the year, but he took “a pass” because he was too busy (but not too busy to tweet about it). The magazine refuted his story, saying that’s not how it chooses people. The honor went to the “Silence Breakers,” who spoke out about sexual misconduct. He was the person of the year in 2016.


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