President-elect Joe Biden, President Trump, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci and others are all on the shortlist to be named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
The distinction, which points to “an individual but sometimes multiple people who greatly impacted the country and world during the calendar year,” has been named since 1927, according to the magazine.
Biden, Trump and Fauci are all in the running this year, as are “front-line health care workers” serving amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the “movement for racial justice” that erupted in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd earlier this year.
Time magazine Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal told the “Today” show on Thursday that 2020 was “the hardest year” that he has been involved in choosing the distinction.
“So many massive stories all over the world, racial justice, the pandemic, presidential elections, wildfires, a really, really challenging year to make this call,” Felsenthal said.
Felsenthal noted Biden’s “historic win” in the race for the White House against Trump, in which he won “more popular votes than any president in history,” as well as Biden’s “very different message than we’ve seen the last four years emphasizing empathy and unity.”
The editor said Trump, who was named the 2016 Person of the Year, is “still very much in control of the Republican Party” and noted that he’s “changed so many norms throughout his term.”
He added that the protests calling for racial justice and widespread policing reforms were “by some measures the largest mass protest in U.S. history,” and called the coronavirus pandemic a “once-in-a-century story.”
Essential workers, including nurses, doctors, delivery people, grocery store employees and others, won Time Magazine’s 2020 Person of the Year reader poll.
17-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg was named Time’s Person of the Year in 2019. The 2020 Person of the Year will be announced during an NBC broadcast special at 10 p.m. ET.