WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday picked a fossil fuel industry defender as his top environmental official, another retired general as homeland security chief and Iowa’s governor as U.S. ambassador to China in choices at odds with some of his recent pronouncements. 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. Aside from the personnel announcements, Trump basked in being named Time magazine’s “person of the year,” telling NBC’s “Today” show, “It’s a great honor, it means a lot.”

In an interview with Time, Trump continued to take on corporate America, promising to bring down drug prices and causing shares of U.S. pharmaceutical and biotech companies to fall. "I don't think that we have ever seen one person, operating in such an unconventional way, have an impact on the events of the year," said Time editor Nancy Gibbs. The real estate tycoon, who has never previously held elected office and shocked the political establishment by defeating his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, is featured on Time’s cover described as “Donald Trump: President of the Divided States of America.”

The magazine said its person of the year, a tradition that began in 1927, “had the greatest influence, for better or worse, on the events of the year.”

“So which is it this year: better or worse?” editor-in-chief Nancy Gibbs wrote.
President-elect of the United States Donald Trump is named Time Person of the Year.