A satirical front page of the Boston Globe, from the future date of April 9, 2017, posited what America would be like under President Donald Trump – and the future did not look “great”.
“Deportations to Begin”, blasts the main headline, with the subtitle, “President Trump calls for tripling of ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) force; riots continue”.
The headline refers to Trump’s anti-immigration platform, which he has emphasized on the campaign trail.
“President Trump has set in motion one of his most controversial campaign promises, calling on Congress to fund a “massive deportation force” by tripling the number of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents,” begins the article, which includes the information that Chris Christie has been appointed Attorney General.
The editorial board of the Boston newspaper printed a fake front page on Sunday which was dated precisely one year away, in a dystopian future which takes place just a few months after Donald Trump, currently in the lead for the GOP presidential nomination, has won the national election and been installed as Head of State.
We take @realDonaldTrump at his word https://t.co/tLcadvrdQa pic.twitter.com/Z4BnNQE5Ts
— Boston Globe Opinion (@GlobeOpinion) April 9, 2016
The spoof includes several other articles with similarly dire headlines drawn from opinions and policies Trump has endorsed, including “US soldiers refuse orders to kill ISIS families”, “Market sinks as trade war looms”, and “New libel law targets ‘absolute scum’ in press”.
In addition to the doom and gloom, the page offers a few laughs by including anecdotes based on the personal idiosyncrasies which have made the Trump persona a source of media glee. One short article describes a feud with China sparked by Trump’s naming his new White House dog after China’s first lady.
“[Trump] was unrepentant, saying his foreign policy needs to be “unpredictable”,” read the article. “Trump added: “I don’t know why she’s so offended. I love cute puppies and I love women!””
In a biting editorial which accompanied the satirical page, entitled “The GOP must stop Trump”, the Boston Globe editorial staff wrote, “It is an exercise in taking a man at his word. [Trump’s] vision of America promises to be as appalling in real life as it is in black and white on the page.”
The message of the fake front page was to urge the GOP not to nominate Trump or his rival, Ted Cruz, which the paper called “equally extreme and perhaps more dangerous”, at the upcoming Republican convention, but to consider a “a plausible, honorable alternative” like Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney.
Trump responded to the attack on the same day, calling the Boston Globe “worthless”, and insinuating that all of its contents were made up, at a campaign rally in New York, the battleground for the next presidential primary.
“How about that stupid Boston Globe? It’s worthless. Sold for a dollar,” he said, Breitbart reported. “Did you see that story? The whole front page – they made up a story that Trump – they pretended Trump as the president. And they made up – the whole front page is a make believe story, which is really, no different from the whole paper for the whole thing. I mean the whole thing is no different.”
The fake page does not mention Israel, nor the Israeli-Arab conflict, despite the fact that the candidates’ stances on the issue have cropped up continuously during the long race to the nominations. However, one sidebar article, titled “Trump on Nobel prize short list”, did touch on the Middle East, reporting speculation that Trump would win a Nobel prize for the feat of “healing a 1,385-year-old schism between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, which has fueled bloody conflicts across the globe for centuries.”
