Casablanca — Time Magazine has named U.S. President-elect Donald Trump the 2016 ‘Person of the Year.’
Casablanca — Time Magazine has named U.S. President-elect Donald Trump the 2016 ‘Person of the Year.’
At the end of each year, the United States news magazine ‘Time’ names a person or group who has had the most influence on the events of that year. Previous titleholders include Martin Luther King, Jr., President Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin, Pope Francis and Angela Merkel.
This year, Time has announced that Donald Trump would be named ‘Person of the Year,’ joining the likes of the prestigious men and women before him and surpassing other influential figures in this year’s shortlist: Mark Zuckerberg, Vladimir Putin, Beyoncé Knowles and the Flint water crisis whistleblowers.
In an article about the magazine’s choice, Time writer Nancy Gibbs says, “This is the 90th time we have named the person who had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year.”
“So which is it this year: Better or worse?” she asks. “The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer.”
“Whatever you think of the man,” says Gibbs, “this much is undeniable: he uncovered an opportunity others didn’t believe existed, the last, greatest deal for a 21st century salesman.”
And Gibbs is right; Trump shook things up. In the magazine’s official announcement, Time’s Michael Scherer admits that Trump “upended the leadership of both major political parties and effectively shifted the political direction of the international order,” adding that “he will soon command history’s most lethal military, along with economic levers that can change the lives of billions.”
With Trump’s nomination, Time Magazine continues a 16-year-old trend of naming president-elects ‘Person of the Year’ after every election, as the title was given to G.W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.
