This Time cover totally nails the chaos in Trump's White House right now

"Nothing to see here."
 By 
Marissa Wenzke
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

From a presidential campaign riddled with connections to Russian officials to a hastily launched immigration ban that's been struck down by courts repeatedly, the White House isn't exactly in the best shape right now.

Even if Trump wouldn't tell you that.

That image -- one of a presidency in the midst of chaos while still trying to deny the obvious -- is at the heart of Time Magazine's newest cover.

In an accompanying animation posted to Twitter Thursday, his trademark hair flutters in a violent gust of wind and rain, while loose papers fly all around him. All of it's captioned by a statement that captures the essence of the always in-denial, artificially confident Trump -- "Nothing to see here."

Brooklyn-based artist Tim O’Brien created the image, saying he was told to place Trump in a storm embodying the current chaos of his administration. "A cartoonist might get the subject to react, to animate, hold on and grimace in the face of the wind," he told Time. "I saw it more as a deadpan look at us."

It's a betraying look of calm that Trump has given before.

"We have made incredible progress," Trump told reporters on Thursday, not straying away from those huge and unverified claims he holds dear: "I don't think there's ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we've done."

Despite how fantastic it's all been, he launched into a long rambling moan about the press -- "The level of dishonesty is out of control" -- and listed all the doomed happening in the U.S. and around the world. "To be honest, I inherited a mess. It's a mess." That idea was swiftly debunked by the Associated Press.

But there's no such chaos in the White House, says Trump, apparently ignoring the findings of U.S. intelligence officials and the grievances expressed by the millions of Americans who have protested his presidency. No, things have been going just great, he said, and it's actually all the media's fault.

"I turn on the T.V., open the newspapers and I see stories of chaos. Chaos," he said. "Yet it is the exact opposite. This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine."

Sure it is.

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Marissa Wenzke

Marissa is a real-time news intern at the LA office. She has a bachelor's degree in political science from UC Santa Barbara and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. She's a free spirit.

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