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Time magazine selected German chancellor Angela Merkel as its person of the year, passing over Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who also made the shortlist for a candidacy Time says has “stirred debate about his party’s future.”
Trump responded to the choice of Merkel in Trumpian fashion, tweeting:
Trump, who appeared on a Time cover earlier this year, had said he doubted the editors would select him for the designation, which goes to the person who has most influenced the news for the year, “for better or worse.”
The magazine’s editors chose Merkel, citing the resolve she demonstrated by managing an economic crisis over the summer, along with the way she’s handling Europe’s refugee crisis and terrorism threat.
Merkel earned the distinction “for asking more of her country than most politicians would dare, for standing firm against tyranny as well as expedience and for providing steadfast moral leadership in a world where it is in short supply,” Time Managing Editor Nancy Gibbs wrote.
The designation comes as Trump has created a firestorm for his proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States – a suggestion that Republicans and Democrats denounced but Trump has embraced as “common sense.”
Trump last month told MSNBC that Merkel was making a mistake by accepting Syrian refugees into her country.
“As far as Merkel’s concerned, she ought to be ashamed of herself, what she’s done,” Trump said, saying there were “riots in the street” in Germany over refugees.
He said then he had a lot of respect for Merkel, but not on the refugee issue: “She blew it, when she allowed this to happen, this migration,” he said.
Lesley Clark: 202-383-6054, @lesleyclark