'New Yorker' released the cover it planned to publish had Hillary Clinton won the election
The New Yorker is giving readers a glimpse of what would have been, had Donald Trump not won the 2016 Presidential Election back in November.
On Wednesday, The New Yorker made a bold move and released the post-election cover the publication planned to run if Hillary Clinton had won the Presidency.
The Malika Favre cover, titled "The First" — to honor what would have been the first female president — shows Clinton gazing out at the moon through the window of the Oval Office.
It now accompanies a David Remnick interview with Clinton titled "Hillary Clinton Looks Back in Anger," in which she discusses everything from Trump and former FBI Director James Comey to her recently published book, What Happened.
"On Election Night, she expected to give a victory speech. Instead, the next morning, before hundreds of shocked, weeping staffers, she made her way through a hastily drafted message of endurance and gratitude," The New Yorker wrote in an Instagram post sharing the cover.
"As she and Bill Clinton were driven away in their car," the caption continued, "she was hollowed out, unable to speak, struggling to breathe: 'At every step I felt that I had let everyone down. Because I had.'"
After election day, instead of Clinton's history-making cover, the magazine published a Donald Trump-dedicated cover by Bob Staake, titled "The Wall."
Rather than showing Trump inside the Oval Office, or his face at all, the cover was quite simply a wall of bricks.
"When we first received the results of the election, we felt as though we had hit a brick wall, full force," The New Yorker's art editor, Françoise Mouly, wrote to describe the cover.
Since Trump took office, The New Yorker, along with other magazines around the world, have used cover art to illustrate powerful political messages about everything from immigration to neo-Nazis and white supremacy.
Now, nine months into Trump's presidency, seeing the contrast in tone between the two candidates' covers certainly makes you think.
Nicole is a Senior Editor at Mashable. She primarily covers entertainment and digital culture trends, and in her free time she can be found watching TV, sending voice notes, or going viral on Twitter for admiring knitwear. You can follow her on Twitter @nicolemichele5.
