Time Editor-in-Chief Reveals Assassination Attempt Among ‘Events’ That Cemented Trump as ‘Obvious’ Pick for Person of the Year: ‘Not a Hard Choice’
Time magazine editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs revealed that President-elect Donald Trump was the “obvious” pick to be for the magazine’s 2024 Person of the Year and that the “transformational moment” was the assassination attempt against him in July.
Trump was named Person of the Year on Thursday, with the publication subsequently revealing a full-page cover featuring the president-elect and publishing a transcript of a wide-ranging sit-down interview with him.
Jacobs appeared on Morning Joe to discuss the cover and what led his team to the decision.
Introducing the editor, host Joe Scarborough noted that he couldn’t decide whether Trump would be considered “a controversial pick or not” but admitted that “it’s hard to not” to see how he is ”the person who has most impacted the year.”
The host continued:
We had a trial. We had an assassination attempt. We had the most tumultuous campaign in modern history. We had rhetoric that at least we thought around this table was the most divisive in recent American history. Then we had a victory where Donald Trump improved in 49 of 50 states.
“I think we are living in the age of Trump. I think many people thought, perhaps, after his defeat in 2020, that his first presidency was an aberration, but what this election shows is it was not,” agreed Jacobs. “He is continuing a path through American politics. And I think in some ways because we’ve been living in that age for nearly a decade now, the sheer extraordinary nature of this year is hard not to take notice of.”
“You just walked us through those events. Each one of those events is going to be a moment in time that historians will be writing about.” he added.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski asked for a “behind the scenes” look at the selection process, noting some of the other big names who were in the running, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Elon Musk. and Joe Rogan.
“In some years this is a hard, hard choice. Mika, last year we talked about Taylor Swift and the decision behind that. This year, not a hard choice… but this was an obvious decision for those of us at Time,” explained Jacobs.
A co-panelist raised the idea that the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, had marked the moment when the country “coalesced” behind him, and other figures like Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decided to lend him their support.
Jacobs responded: “I think that is a transformational moment for Trump and the country. We asked him about it and he said a lot of people changed about how they thought about me during that moment. It’s harder to get him to talk about how it changed him, but he recognizes that as a moment when he moves from a factional political leader to a cultural one.”
Watch above on MSNBC.
