693
0Donald Trump
2024 TIME Person of the Year
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Dec 12, 2024, Time Magazine
Mar-a-Lago was quiet three days before Thanksgiving. Donald Trump’s Moorish palace seemed all but deserted late that morning, the seaside estate’s cavernous living room traversed intermittently by a junior staffer or silent aide. Totems to Trump were displayed everywhere. Framed magazines with him on the cover hung by the front door. On a table near the fireplace sat a cast-bronze eagle awarded him by the singer Lee Greenwood. In the men’s lavatory, a picture of him with Arnold Palmer hung near the urinals. Adorning a wall in the library bar, a painting titled The Visionary depicted Trump in a tennis sweater, trim and youthful. The empty rooms felt less like a millionaire members’ club than a museum.
By midafternoon, the President-elect’s imminent arrival had stirred signs of life. Discreetly placed speakers offered up selections from Trump’s personally curated 2,000-song playlist. A handful of transition honchos and soon-to-be Administration officials arrived, perching on overstuffed sofas and huddling in corners. Incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles conferred with Trump’s designated National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz. Vice President–elect J.D. Vance strode in with a retinue of staffers. An aide posted up near a window overlooking the patio, setting down Trump’s personal cell phone, which lit up occasionally with calls and texts from favored media personalities and Cabinet picks. You could sense Trump before you could see him, the small group of senior aides rising to their feet in anticipation.
The world’s most powerful man entered with an air of unhurried bonhomie. Dressed in his trademark navy suit and red tie, Trump, 78, appeared a little older than he had some seven months earlier, when he last met with TIME—more subdued, less verbose, the same discursive speech patterns but with the volume turned down. Sitting under bright lights for a 30-minute photo session ahead of a 65-minute interview, he’s asked to explain the bruising on his right hand. “It’s from shaking hands with thousands of people,” he says.
Trump’s political rebirth is unparalleled in American history. His first term ended in disgrace, with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results culminating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He was shunned by most party officials when he announced his candidacy in late 2022 amid multiple criminal investigations. Little more than a year later, Trump cleared the Republican field, clinching one of the fastest contested presidential primaries in history. He spent six weeks during the general election in a New York City courtroom, the first former President to be convicted of a crime—a fact that did little to dampen his support. An assassin’s bullet missed his skull by less than an inch at a rally in Butler, Pa., in July. Over the next four months, he beat not one but two Democratic opponents, swept all seven swing states, and became the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years. He has realigned American politics, remaking the GOP and leaving Democrats reckoning with what went awry.
Trump has a ready explanation for his improbable resurrection. He even has a name for its climactic final act. “I called it 72 Days of Fury,” he says as the interview gets under way. “We hit the nerve of the country. The country was angry.” It wasn’t just the MAGA faithful. Trump harnessed deep national discontent about the economy, immigration, and cultural issues. His grievances resonated with suburban moms and retirees, Latino and Black men, young voters and tech edgelords. While Democrats estimated that most of the country wanted a President who would uphold the norms of liberal democracy, Trump saw a nation ready to smash them, tapping into a growing sense that the system was rigged.
If America was craving change, it is about to see how much Trump can deliver. He ran on a strongman vision, proposing to deport migrants by the millions, dismantle parts of the federal government, seek revenge against his political adversaries, and dismantle institutions that millions of people see as censorious and corrupt. “He understands the cultural zeitgeists,” says his 2016 campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who remains a close adviser. “Donald Trump is a complicated person with simple ideas, and way too many politicians are the exact opposite.”
