TIME magazine unveiled its annual Person of the Year, and to little surprise, President-elect Donald Trump's mug appears on the cover. He beat out a handful on the "short list," which included Hillary Clinton, Beyoncé, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the CRISPR Pioneers at the University of Pennsylvania, and "The Hackers" — who TIME reports "took aim at democracy itself" this year.
From the announcement:
It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption. This real estate baron and casino owner turned reality-TV star and provocateur—never a day spent in public office, never a debt owed to any interest besides his own—now surveys the smoking ruin of a vast political edifice that once housed parties, pundits, donors, pollsters, all those who did not see him coming or take him seriously. Out of this reckoning, Trump is poised to preside, for better or worse.
... For reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing tomorrow’s political culture by demolishing yesterday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year.
Read the cover story and see the full list here.
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