US president-elect joins Obama, Hitler and Stalin on list of people deemed most influential ‘for better or for worse’

In a fitting end to a year in which he dominated TV screens and front pages, Donald Trump has been named Time’s person of the year.

The annual cover on which the magazine recognises the person who “for better or for worse … has done the most to influence the events of the year” pictures the president-elect in his New York tower with the headline, Donald Trump: President of the Divided States of America.

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The editor-in-chief of Time, Nancy Gibbs, wrote in the issue: “So which is it this year: better or worse? The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer.

“It’s hard to measure the scale of his disruption … 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.”

In an interview accompanying the cover, Trump says he does not believe Russia interfered in the election, defends his claim of widespread illegal voting, and insists that despite his wealth he represents “the workers of the world”, who “love me”.

On allegations made by the US government that Russia hacked the Democratic national committee’s emails, Trump tells Time: “I don’t believe they interfered … It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, who was Time’s pick in 2007, was on the 11-person shortlist for 2016 compiled by the Time editors, as was the Trump associate and former Ukip leader Nigel Farage.

Trump’s defeated opponent, Hillary Clinton, the singer Beyoncé and Mark Zuckerberg, who previously occupied the cover in 2010, were also shortlisted.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump on the cover of Time. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

Despite his ability to polarise opinion, Trump is far from the most controversial choice in the 90 years Time has picked its person of the year. Both Stalin and Hitler took the title in the late 1930s, with Stalin appearing again in 1942, and the Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini has also featured.

Known until 1999 as man of the year, the magazine’s annual issue has occasionally stretched the definition of person, putting both “you” and “whistleblowers” on the cover in recent years.

Last year’s pick was the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the sitting president, Barack Obama, appeared both as president-elect in 2008 and after securing a second term in 2012.

Obama is also appearing on a cover this month in a joint interview with his wife, Michelle, for People magazine in which the first lady, asked how she had spent election night, said: “I went to bed. I don’t like to watch the political discourse; I never have. I barely did with him [Obama].”

She told the magazine that, like her husband, she was prepared to work with Trump to prepare him for the presidency.

“This is our democracy, and this is how it works,” she said. “We are ready to work with the next administration and make sure they are as successful as they can be. Because that’s what’s best for this country.”