Donald Trump is Time magazine’s Person of the Year

PRESIDENT-ELECT Donald Trump, who has both derided Time magazine and pined for its approval, was named the publication’s Person of the Year on Thursday (Dec 12).

Trump also received the title in 2016, after his first presidential election victory, and now joins a select group of people who have been chosen twice. The club includes the last three two-term presidents: Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama. (Franklin D Roosevelt is the only person to have been given the title three times.)

Trump has had a tempestuous relationship with Time. After being named Person of the Year in 2016, he described the magazine as a “very important” publication and said it had granted him a “tremendous honour”.

But Trump, who had won a polarising presidential race in which he lost the popular vote, bristled at Time’s cover, which described him as “president of the divided states of America”.

“I didn’t divide,” he objected in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today show, adding: “We’re going to put it back together. And we’re going to have a country that’s very well healed.”

In 2017, Trump said he would most likely have been named Person of the Year for a second straight year if not for his unwillingness to sit for an interview and a photo shoot. Time pushed back on that claim.