The New Yorker repurposed one of the most famous newspaper covers ever to take on Kanye West and Donald Trump

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New Yorker Kanye West 2020 cover

The New Yorker

The New Yorker is cleverly taking on rapper Kanye West's declaration that he's going to run for president of the United States in 2020 with a cover that re-imagines the infamous "Dewey defeats Truman" cover of the Chicago Tribune in 1948.

Here's how cartoonist Barry Blitt describes his cover: "Kanye West's announcement of his intention to seek the Presidency reminds us that it's not too early to start thinking about the 2020 campaign. (2016's already old hat by now, anyway). And when one considers Mr. West, it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination to be reminded of another scrappy kid who won the Presidency, back in 1948, against all odds. The press wrote him off, too. That's right - Harry Truman."

In a rush to jump on what the Tribune thought was a sure thing, the newspaper pushed out its post-Election Day edition to the presses before all the votes were tallied. 

The Tribune recalls the mistake on its website: "The ink was hardly dry on 150,000 copies of the paper when radio bulletins reported that the race was surprisingly close. The headline was changed to DEMOCRATS MAKE SWEEP OF STATE OFFICES for the second edition."

Here's the cover:

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dewey defeauts truman

AP

Biggest mistake since...?

With Donald Trump racing to the head of the pack of Republican presidential hopefuls, despite many people not taking his candidacy seriously when he first announced it, we might not be able to write anything off - even Kanye 2020.

The rapper announced his White House aspirations during MTV's Video Music Awards this past weekend:

West prefaced his bombshell announcement by saying: "It's not about me. It's about ideas. New ideas. People with ideas. People who believe in truth."

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Perhaps being at least somewhat tongue in cheek, the Democratic National Committee also "welcomed" West into the race:

 

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