'Stuff of nightmares': Time magazine morphs Trump's face with Putin's for new cover

CTV News Channel: Putin in the White House Politico's Daniel Lippman says U.S. President Trump doesn't appear to be informing his intelligence agencies of his agreements with Russia.

Time magazine has placed U.S. President Donald Trump on its cover for the second time in as many months.

The striking image, morphing the 72-year-old’s face with that of Russian President Vladimir Putin, comes following the pair’s meeting in Helsinki, Finland on Monday.

The illustration depicts the U.S. president’s trademark blonde hair, as well as his eyebrows and pursed lips, together with Putin’s nose and eyes.

Trump has come under heavy fire from Republicans and Democrats alike for openly questioning his own administration’s conclusion that Russia tried to undermine the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Social media had some interesting reactions to Time’s latest cover.

“The new @TIME front cover is the stuff of nightmares,” tweeted Andrew Bloch.

“TIME Magazine knows just how to piss Trump off with their covers,” tweeted Brian Krassenstein.

“What a cover for this weeks (sic) Time magazine... scary as hell!!!,” tweeted Stanley Chow.

The July cover was likened to a similar morphing of the two world leaders in a March 2017 issue of German magazine Der Spiegel.

The photo illustration was created by visual artist Nancy Burson and Torontonian John Depew.

It “is meant to represent this particular moment in U.S. foreign policy, following the pair's recent meeting in Helsinki, Finland," according to a statement in the magazine.

Depew and Burson created the eerie Trump/Putin hybrid by forming a composite and mapping out the images so they would transition from one to another.

“I took care of the digital imaging alongside Nancy Burson,” Depew said. “It was pitched to Time through Nancy. She’s a pioneer in doing composite work. We pitched it to them, they liked it and so it went through.”

The pair met while Depew was studying at the New York Film Academy.

“I got out of school not too long ago and I haven’t been involved in something like this. I’m not used to answering questions and seeing something I worked on everywhere. I’m speechless,” he added.

Trump backtracked on his comments on Tuesday, saying he had misspoke when he said he saw no reason to believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election.

"The sentence should have been, 'I don't see any reason why I wouldn't, or why it wouldn't be Russia"' instead of "why it would," Trump said of the comments he had made standing alongside Putin.

The U.S. president has been tweeting furiously since Monday, defending his performance at the summit.

“The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media,” he tweeted on Thursday. “I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more. There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems...but they can ALL be solved!”