End of Time: Trump Says No to Being Mag’s ‘Person of the Year’

President Donald Trump tweeted that Time magazine contacted him Friday to say he was probably going to be named the publication’s “Person of the Year” for the second year in a row, but that he’d declined, indicating he didn’t want to have to sit for an interview and photo.

“Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named ‘Man (Person) of the Year,’ like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!”

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Trump was Time’s 2016 “Person of the Year,” and on the cover of the magazine he was shown seated in a silk-upholstered chair that was turned away from the camera. He’s twisting back toward the camera with a serious look on his face, almost a scowl.

In the cover story, the reporter, Michael Scherer, repeatedly referred to the president-elect as a “demagogue,” compared him to Fidel Castro, and said he’d inspired “new levels of anger and fear” in the country.

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The article painted a familiar picture of Trump as a showman and his voters as idiots, who had danced along to the tune being played.

A year later, it doesn’t hold up. On his two biggest campaign pledges, trade and immigration, the president has moved quickly, announcing he’ll renegotiate NAFTA or get out of it, and has attacked the immigration issue from 40 directions. Among them: the ban on immigrants from seven majority Muslim countries, the rescinding of the memo that created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the hiring of 370 more immigration judges to speed deportations, and the challenge in federal court of a claim by an illegal immigrant minor that she had a right to a taxpayer-funded abortion. Trump appears to be doing almost everything he said he’d do — or as much as he can with a sometimes uncooperative Senate.

Trump has been featured on the cover of Time a total of 14 times, according to an April article on the magazine’s website. The first was on Jan. 16, 1989, when he was shown staring at the camera, holding a playing card in his hand, an ace, with the headline, “This man may turn you green with envy — or just turn you off. Flaunting it is the game, and Trump is the name.”

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Time magazine responded to Trump on its Twitter account, writing on Friday evening, “The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. Time does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6.”

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