Comment on The Story Behind TIME’s Donald Trump 2024 Person of the Year Cover

We are nearing a century of Person of the Year, the franchise TIME’s editors launched as a make-good at the end of 1927, after realizing they had failed to mark Charles Lindbergh’s history-making transatlantic flight on the cover. It is our privilege to work on a project that has, across those years, become a milestone and, yes, a lightning rod.

As Platon guided President-elect Donald Trump to a simple wooden box on the set of the TIME Person of the Year photo shoot at Mar-a-Lago in November, he declared, “More world leaders have sat on that apple box than on any other seat!” Platon has traveled the world with that very box, and on it he has posed some of the most influential figures in modern history including Barack Obama, Muammar Gaddafi, Robert Mugabe, Vladimir Putin, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Benjamin Netanyahu, Imran Khan, Paul Kagame, Jacob Zuma, Tony Blair, George W.

Three days before Thanksgiving, the former and future President of the United States is sitting in the sun-filled dining room of his Florida home and private club. In the lavish reception area, more than a dozen people have been waiting for nearly two hours for Donald Trump to emerge. His picks for ­National Security Adviser, special envoy to the Middle East, Vice President, and chief of staff huddle nearby.

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.

For the 2024 Person of the Year issue, former and future President Donald Trump sat down for a lengthy interview with TIME on Nov. 25 at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla. TIME has published the transcript of that conversation. In addition, below is a review for facts and context of several of Trump’s statements from the interview. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] What Trump Said: “I was saying it could be 21 million people.

Today, TIME is embarking on one of the most exciting chapters in its 101-year history. As we announced Donald Trump as the 2024 Person of the Year, we also launched TIME AI, our innovative platform developed in collaboration with Scale AI. Our hope is to redefine what it means to interact with journalism.