President-elect Donald Trump has for the second time joined an exclusive club in the company of global figures and leaders – some controversial.
Time magazine named Trump its 2024 Person of the Year, and he thanked the news outlet and beamed while ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange shortly after on Thursday morning.
Trump said: ‘Time Magazine, getting this honor for the second time – I think I like it better this time, actually.
‘It is an honor. And this is a double, because usually they don’t coordinate the man of the year – or the Person of the Year – with the ringing of the bell.
‘And brilliantly, you’ve picked them both at the same time.’
Trump was last named Time’s Person of the Year in 2016, when he won his first US election. Every American president since Franklin D Roosevelt, except for one, has received Time’s prestigious title at least once.
The incoming president is a two-time winner of the title like former Soviet Union Prime Minister Joseph Stalin, still considered among the most brutal authoritarian leaders in modern history. Notorious leaders who won the recognition once include former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, former Soviet Union Prime Minister Nikita Khrushchev and former Supreme Leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini.
Time picks its Person of the Year based on ‘the greatest impact on the news, for good or ill’.
The magazine chronicled Trump’s journey in making the greatest comeback, and included his commentary from a Mar-a-Lago interview in late November.
‘Trump’s political rebirth is unparalleled in American history,’ wrote Time.
‘He was shunned by most party officials when he announced his candidacy in late 2022 amid multiple criminal investigations.
‘Little more than a year later, Trump cleared the Republican field, clinching one of the fastest contested presidential primaries in history.’
Asked what his father would think of his comeback, Trump said: ‘I think he maybe would not call it a comeback. He would have said it’s just Donald.’
Trump edged out a shortlist of people including his 2024 opponent Vice President Kamala Harris, the Princess of Wales, billionaire and innovator Elon Musk and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
In his lengthy sit-down interview, Trump said he plans to use the US’s support for Ukraine to get Russia to agree to end the war, and that he will work to bring grocery prices down though ‘it’s very hard’ now that they’re already high.
He said that one of his first actions when he returns to the White House will be pardoning most of the January 6 Capitol rioters.
Regarding being grazed in the ear during his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump said he thinks ‘a lot of people became much more religious in that moment’.
‘That was a horrible day, it was a horrible moment in our country,’ he said, ‘But I think it, it did change a lot of a lot of minds.’
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