President-elect Donald Trump was selected by TIME Magazine as Person of the Year, a choice that has not come as a surprise to many. However, to show precisely how disruptive an influence the contraversial billionaire has had on world events over the past few years, the magazine cover dubbed him: “President of the Divided States of America.”

 
The text that accompanies and explains this year’s choice notes that “The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees with the answer.”

 
Minutes after Nancy Gibbs, Time’s managing editor, revealed the magazine’s selection, Donald Trump commented on the news to Today host Matt Lauer: “It’s a great honor. It means a lot,” the president-elect said. “It’s a very important magazine and I’ve been lucky enough to be on the cover many times this year.”

 
Trump’s rival in the presidential elections, Hillary Clinton, was named runner-up. Equally interesting were Time’s other four selections: “The Hackers,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the CRISPR Pioneers, and Beyonce.

 
It has been a tradition every election year for the magazine to give the president or president-elect the title.
Time’s Person of the Year tradition began in 1927, when the title was called Man of the Year. The prestigious title goes to whoever most influenced the news of the year , whether good or bad.

 
At the end of her preface to the TIME cover story, Gibb writes: ” 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 yesteryday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year.”

Source: TIME, NY Daily News