The devil in the detail: Time magazine explains Donald Trump cover while social media lights up over his red ‘horns’
Editor said the cover recognises the person who “for better or for worse … has done the most to influence the events of the year”
In a fitting end to a year in which he dominated TV screens and front pages, Donald Trump has been named Time magazine’s person of the year but the devil may be in the detail.
As editor-in-chief Nancy Gibbs explained the choice of Trump for the annual honour, social media users pointed out that whoever designed the cover had – inadvertently or perhaps deliberately – given the president-elect “devil’s horns”.
“Given the shape of the letter “m” in the magazine’s name and its location on the cover, many other subjects in the past have also appeared to sprout extra features,” the post read.
Gibbs said the cover recognises the person who “for better or for worse … has done the most to influence the events of the year”.
“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 told 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.
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. Indeed, some Twitter users also noted the visual similarities between Hitler’s cover and Trump’s.
Known until 1999 as man of the year, the magazine’s annual issue has occasionally stretched the definition of person, putting both “you” and “whistle-blowers” 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.
