Donald Trump Is Time’s 2024 ‘Person Of The Year’
President-elect Donald Trump was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” for a second time on Thursday as he gears up to return to the White House.
Politico broke the news on Wednesday that Trump will be this year’s recipient, following pop star Taylor Swift last year. The outlet also said that Trump will ring the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange to commemorate the moment.
The president-elect was chosen from a shortlist that included Vice President Kamala Harris, tech mogul Elon Musk, Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Time magazine editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote that in many years, picking the individual who “for better or for worse, did the most to shape the world and the headlines over the past 12 months” was a difficult task. But “in 2024, it was not.”
Donald Trump is TIME's Person of the Year https://t.co/IjP5W2otV5 pic.twitter.com/CVHX9o0DB3
— TIME (@TIME) December 12, 2024
“On the cusp of his second presidency, all of us—from his most fanatical supporters to his most fervent critics—are living in the Age of Trump,” Jacobs wrote.
“Now we watch as members of Congress, international institutions, and global leaders once again align themselves with his whims.”
Trump was also named “Person of the Year” in 2016 following his upset election. The honor goes to a person who the magazine’s editors determine was the year’s most influential newsmaker. Fourteen U.S. presidents, including Trump, have been named Time’s “Person of the Year.” Past recipients from the ranks of world leaders include Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Winston Churchill.
Trump has had a love-hate relationship with the magazine from his time as a real estate developer and reality TV star. He panned the magazine as a lapsed tastemaker in 2013: “The Time Magazine list of the 100 Most Influential People is a joke and stunt of a magazine that will, like Newsweek, soon be dead. Bad list!”
But in 2016 — on the heels of becoming “Person of the Year” for the first time — Trump called Time a “very important magazine.”