The Obama ‘Hope’ meme has been given a revamp to reflect how American politics has evolved since the US president came to power.
Donald Trump appears on the magazine’s latest front cover in a mutation of the iconic image of Obama created by street artist Shepard Fairey during the president’s 2008 election campaign.
The word ‘Hope’ has been replaced with ‘Grope’ in Trump’s red and blue image, which sits alongside Obama’s with the headline ‘How American politics has changed’.
Commenters praised the cover, which came out after the second US presidential debate when Trump faced down accusations that he had groped women after a historic tape showed him saying he could “grab them by the pussy” and that he had “moved” on a married woman “like a bitch”.
Further recordings published over the weekend showed the married US presidential hopeful allegedly saying he’d have “no problem” having sex with 24-year-olds and that reaching 35 meant it was “check-out time” for a woman.
The interviews with ‘shock-jock’ radio host Howard Stern included Trump agreeing object when Stern refers to his daughter as a “piece of ass”.
Commenters praised the Private Eye cover saying it was “on the money” and exemplified “how much of a laughing stock” US politics has become:
The cover is far from the first reworking of Trump’s image.
Naked sculptures of the Republican candidate popped up in cities around the US in August, while artist Illma Gore also imagined him naked in a NSFW picture circulated in February.
Naked Trump seems to be a recurring theme, as Kanye West employed a naked Trump lookalike in the video for his song Famous.
Meanwhile, in September the popular “Pepe the Frog” meme was listed as a ‘hate symbol’ by the US’s Anti-Defamation League, after it was appropriated into various political symbols including an image of Trump.
Although the candidate has not endorsed or approved the symbol which is sometimes linked to the Alt-Right movement, he shared a tweet last year with Pepe’s face merged with his.
