--- title: The Story Behind TIME's 'Plague Election' Donald Trump Cover description: Artist Tim O’Brien revisits his award-winning series depicting the mounting troubles facing President Trump for the Aug. 17 issue of TIME. canonical: https://time.com/5876076/donald-trump-time-cover-plague-election/ author: D.W. Pine article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-08-06T10:14:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T09:05:11.377Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Story Behind TIME's 'Plague Election' Donald Trump Cover og:description: Artist Tim O’Brien revisits his award-winning series depicting the mounting troubles facing President Trump og:url: https://time.com/5876076/donald-trump-time-cover-plague-election/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt747c119dc69763d3/698a110d22fb859bf6e2b4ca/TIM200817_Pandemic.Cover_.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2363 og:image:height: 1329 og:image:alt: The Plague Election Time Magazine Cover 200817 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Story Behind TIME's 'Plague Election' Donald Trump Cover twitter:description: Artist Tim O’Brien revisits his award-winning series depicting the mounting troubles facing President Trump twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt747c119dc69763d3/698a110d22fb859bf6e2b4ca/TIM200817_Pandemic.Cover_.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Story Behind TIME's 'Plague Election' Donald Trump Cover > Sponsored content. 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It explains how TIME's journalism is made, from the first pitch through the editorial decisions behind a finished story or cover. #### How can I read about how TIME chooses its covers? Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=2b5bb381-7956-4a31-8f0d-71919ad265d6&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1)  by [D.W. Pine](https://time.com/author/d-w-pine/)  ## D.W. Pine Pine is the Creative Director at TIME. Aug 6, 2020 10:14 AM UTC  Illustration by Tim O'Brien for TIME  by [D.W. Pine](https://time.com/author/d-w-pine/)  ## D.W. Pine Pine is the Creative Director at TIME. Aug 6, 2020 10:14 AM UTC For the cover of the Aug. 17, 2020 issue of TIME, longtime collaborator Tim O’Brien revisited his award-winning series depicting the mounting troubles facing President Trump. The new cover is the fourth installment and the first to depart the Oval Office, painting Trump at sea surrounded by COVID-19, as the White House recedes from view. It accompanies a cover story by TIME national correspondent Molly Ball on the ways the pandemic is transforming the 2020 election. “For the past year, I’ve been pondering one more cover in the series, but there was always a new intervening controversy, scandal, social upheaval, or norm-crushing tweet to change the story,” says O’Brien, a Brooklyn artist who has been creating TIME covers for more than 30 years. The first three covers in the series featured Trump inside the Oval Office as rainstorms gathered inside: “Nothing to See Here” (Feb. 27, 2017), “Stormy” (April 23, 2018) and “In Deep” (Sept. 3, 2018). The “Stormy” cover was named 2018 Cover of the Year by AdWeek and received a Gold medal from the Art Director’s Club. “The rising water as a metaphor for chaos in the Trump White House could only end two ways,” adds O’Brien, who has painted more TIME covers (32 and counting) than any artist in the past 50 years. “So he survives only to be in the surging waves surrounded by coronavirus, each one a little bomb.” O’Brien’s work has appeared in publications around the world, as well as on several U.S. postage stamps including the popular _Hunger Games_ trilogy. Two of his TIME magazine covers – one with Bill Clinton and Bob Dole and the other with the “Grand Old Populists,” both published in 1996 – reside in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5876076/donald-trump-time-cover-plague-election/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5876076/donald-trump-time-cover-plague-election/"},"headline":"The Story Behind TIME's 'Plague Election' Donald Trump Cover","datePublished":"2020-08-06T10:14:36.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T09:05:11.377Z","description":"Artist Tim O’Brien revisits his award-winning series depicting the mounting troubles facing President Trump for the Aug. 17 issue of TIME.","url":"https://time.com/5876076/donald-trump-time-cover-plague-election/","keywords":["COVID-19","Magazine"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt747c119dc69763d3/698a110d22fb859bf6e2b4ca/TIM200817_Pandemic.Cover_.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"D.W. 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