The cover of New York magazine’s new Health Issue shows President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in their underwear in a doctored image that critics are calling inappropriate and unethical.
The July 15–28 Health Issue features a photo illustration by Martin Schoeller depicting the president and his predecessor standing side by side on sets of scales that suggest a medical exam.
It’s based on source photographs of Trump by Seth Wenig and Biden by Mandel Ngan, according to the magazine.
“We had already been thinking about how to address the fact that this health issue would drop in the middle of the presidential campaign, when the presidential debate put the health and age of the candidates in the center of the national conversation,” New York’s executive editor, Genevieve Smith, said of the cover in a press release.
After the magazine revealed the cover on social media Wednesday, people flooded the Instagram comments section with criticism.
“I’d just like to note that if a publication photoshopped a woman’s head onto a body in underwear and posted it then the comments would be different. This is such a weird thing to do to anyone,” one person wrote.
“This feels wildly disrespectful and inconceivably out of line,” another commenter said.
“Did you really need to make this the cover? It’s so unnecessary and objectifying. Bad form,” read another response.
Over on X, the former Twitter, the response was similarly negative.
Reached for comment, a New York Magazine spokesperson said: “This cover is part of the magazine’s longstanding tradition of political cartoons. We hope our readers found it funny, and are ok that some didn’t.”
The magazine issue includes a special package containing analysis on the “existential crisis Democrats are facing as the nation questions President Biden’s fitness for office,” according to a press release.
Biden sparked a firestorm over his candidacy after he flubbed the June 27 presidential debate, prompting an ongoing discourse over whether he is the best person to take on Trump in the November election.
Meanwhile, Trump, who frequently gives rambling speeches, lied throughout the debate and equivocated when asked if he would honor the election results.