After a landslide election victory, TIME Magazine tops it off with a coronation: Donald Trump is the Person of the Year.
In the interview with the magazine that decided he is the most representative person of 2024, the president-elect explained that his electoral fortunes changed after the July 13 assassination attempt, when, with a bloodied face, he raised a fist in the air. “A lot of people changed with that moment,” he said, dubbing the final months of his campaign “72 days of fury” that propelled him to power because “the country was angry.”
This is the second time he has been selected: Trump was already chosen in 2016 as Person of the Year, when he won the presidential election by defeating Hillary Clinton. This year, TIME awarded Trump for a political comeback “unparalleled in American history.”
Trump is the first president since Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s to return to the White House after losing a previous presidential race.
Trump told TIME that one of his first official acts after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, will be to pardon most of the Jan. 6 rioters. During the interview, Trump said he will sign more executive orders to resume construction of the wall on the border with Mexico and will initiate planned mass deportations of more than 11 million undocumented migrants.
With his election, according to the magazine, “we are witnessing a resurgence of populism, a growing distrust of the institutions that defined the last century and from liberal values that will lead to better lives for most people. Trump is both agent and beneficiary of all this.”
Today, Time writes, we are witnessing the “rebirth” of Trump, who “cleared the Republican field, clinching one of the fastest contested presidential primaries in history” and won despite having “spent six weeks during the general election in a New York City courtroom.” Moreover, his one debate with the sitting president “prompted Biden to drop out of the race.”
Trump, according to Time, won by his ability to “broaden the base of the party,” with messaging that “resonated with suburban moms and retirees, Latino and Black men, young voters and tech edgelords.” The reality TV star garnered the highest percentage of African American votes for a Republican since Gerald Ford and the largest number of Latino voters of any GOP candidate since George W. Bush. In short, “he beat not one but two Democratic opponents, swept all seven swing states, and became the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years.
