Inside The Brutal Feud Between Donald Trump And Vanity Fair

Donald Trump's historic return to the White House came as a shock to many who were hoping for a vastly different outcome. While knowing that the controversial politician can't run for a third term offered some consolation in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election results, plenty of people all over the country were left devastated. But the sharp commentary from Vanity Fair and its former longtime editor, Graydon Carter, who have taken humorous jabs at the president-elect for decades, also provided some solace. Following the 2024 election, on the outlet's Instagram, they shared a digital cover featuring Trump, along with several headlines reading: "34 Felony Counts, 1 Conviction, 2 Cases Pending, 2 Impeachments, 6 Bankruptcies, 4 More Years, The 47th American President." We can't speak for the politician, but we bet this wasn't the victory cover he had in mind.

Pundits quickly took to the comments section to offer their thoughts, and while Trump has yet to respond, his supporters did their best to defend him. "You guys at @VanityFair are so brainwashed. Get out of your bubble and talk to some regular people for a change," one wrote. "It's time to get real and make this nation strong again. Instead of a bunch of sissies that only care about civil rights," added another. Others criticized Vanity Fair for designing what they deemed to be a bad cover, reminding the outlet that the majority of Americans voted for the president-elect. Of course, there were also those who praised the magazine for its candor. "And Vanity Fair said it WITH THEIR CHEST," one person wrote. Others expressed their dismay at how a convicted felon could possibly have won. 

If you figured that Vanity Fair's scathing 2024 Donald Trump cover was the outlet's first jab at the president-elect, well, you'd be wrong. The divisive politician has actually been feuding with the outlet — more specifically its former editor, Graydon Carter — for decades. Carter's influence as a prestigious magazine editor arguably outweighed Trump's back in the 1980s, when the outspoken politician didn't have the option of furiously hopping on X, formerly known as Twitter, to decry unflattering articles about him as fake news. In 1984, Carter wrote a Trump-focused piece for GQ in which he called the businessman's hands "small and neatly groomed." Trump's ego likely took a hit from those four little words, but it was when Carter referred to him as a "short-fingered vulgarian," in another piece he penned for Spy magazine that the future president got really ticked off (via Politico).

Instead of trying to let the comments roll off his back, Trump launched a personal campaign to try and convince Carter that his hands are not, in fact, small. The journalist detailed the real estate mogul's hilarious attempts at proving his hands were of a reasonable size in an article published by Vanity Fair in 2015. "To this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump. There is always a photo of him — generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers," Carter wrote, recalling his most recent mail, where the controversial politician circled his hand and wrote: "See, not so short!" Carter, bless him, mailed it back to Trump with a note clarifying, "Actually, quite short." And here we thought Trump's disastrous hair transformation was the only thing keeping him up at night.

Aside from giving Donald Trump some serious self-esteem issues, Vanity Fair managed to leave the divisive two-time president red under the collar after it ran a negative review of his restaurant, Trump Grill (or Grille — the spelling is inconsistent) in December 2016. The headline boomed: "Trump Grill could be the worst restaurant in America." The article criticized the restaurant's "cheap version of rich" interior and declared that most of the food served at the establishment (aside from the taco bowl), was practically inedible. Writer Tina Nguyen shared that she once ate the eyeball of a roasted pig on a dare, but admitted that even that would have been preferable to the restaurant's burgers.

Washing the food down with a cocktail also proved a fruitless endeavor, with Nguyen describing it as tasting like something "concocted by a college freshman experimenting in their dorm room." Suffice it to say that the famously thin-skinned Trump was none too pleased with the scathing take and took to X to show the outlet who was boss (literally, in this case). "Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!" he wrote just a day after the article was published. Some helpful users in the comments pointed out that Trump, who has long been rumored to have trouble reading, was spreading misinformation. 

In fact, by all accounts the magazine's numbers looked just fine, with several users backing up their tweets with graphs. As for Vanity Fair itself, they gleefully clapped back: "Vanity Fair: way up, big success, alive! Subscribe today!" No matter how hard Trump tries, they always seem to get the last word.