Trump was the only possible choice for Person of the Year

Time Magazine has officially named Donald Trump as its Person of the Year.

Of course it has. Who else could have competed for the prestigious title?

Could it have been President Biden, who pretended for so long that he was fit to be president, and has recently torched his own legacy by granting his son Hunter a despicable open-ended pardon? Could it have been Jill Biden, presumably the power behind the Resolute Desk, wielding authority beyond her talents — and supposedly having been most responsible for pushing Joe into trying for a second term?

Could it have been Vice President Kamala Harris, the accidental Democratic nominee whose campaign burned through $1.5 billion on the path to a resounding defeat?

Incredibly, Harris was on the shortlist for the distinction. So was Claudia Sheinbaum, a confirmed leftist recently elected president of Mexico. Sheinbaum made a great show of standing up to Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexico if her government doesn’t help close our border — I give that posture six months at most.

Notably absent from the list are some of the foreign leaders who were most excited to welcome Biden back to the White House in 2020 — for instance, France’s President Macron, whose approval rating is 23 percent and who cannot organize a functioning government for his country. Time ignored Canadian President Justin Trudeau, who is heading toward a federal election while polling at just 22 percent, compared to his conservative rival Pierre Poilievre at 43 percent.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer won a landslide victory for his Labour Party this year. But in the short time since, he has, according to Politico, “suffered the biggest post-election fall in approval ratings of any British prime minister in the modern era.”

And let’s not ignore German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose approval rating slid to 18 percent in September and whose ruling coalition collapsed last month. Scholz has asked parliament for a confidence vote that he is likely to lose. As Germany’s economy reels from auto industry losses brought on by electric vehicle mandates, Scholz and his SPD party are likely to lose as well.

Here’s what’s happening: Liberal establishment politicians around the world are in free-fall. They are being brought down by their slavish dedication to climate policies that are undermining their industries and economies, and unlimited immigration, as their outraged populations see foreign newcomers threatening their wages and their livelihoods.

Voters all over the world also want to put behind them liberal follies about crime and gender. Finally, ESG and DEI, pillars of the virtue-signaling liberal orthodoxy, are falling by the wayside.

Who had the guts to call out these misguided and reckless notions that have endangered rather than enriched the world? Trump, who has been mocked and maligned since he came down the golden escalator in 2015. He has been impeached and indicted, sued for ludicrous sums of money, hounded by law enforcement agencies and targeted for assassination. Never in the history of the world has a public figure suffered more abuse in such a short space of time — from the media, from academia, from the legal and the entertainment world. The intelligentsia declared him politically dead, and he proved them all wrong by rising again.

This is the second year in which Trump has been named Person of the Year, celebrating and conceding that revival. Because it is clear that Trump did not just win an election. Rather, he became the most powerful and influential person in the world, even before taking office.

Adversaries such as Trudeau have journeyed to Mar-a-Lago to plead their case. Meta CEO Jeff Zuckerberg, who banned Trump from Facebook not long ago, just donated $1 million to his inauguration fund. Leftist pundit Joe Scarborough made the trip to Palm Beach, eager to grovel and beg for access after brutally attacking Trump for years.

Already, by dint of his strength (and President Biden’s weakness), Trump is influencing events at home and overseas. FBI Director Chris Wray has announced he will retire; he does not want to suffer the humiliation of being fired for politicizing our once-great law enforcement agency. Biden is reportedly primed to hand out buckets of pardons in hopes that the misdeeds of people like Anthony Fauci, under fire for his organization’s funding of gain-of-function research, or Adam Schiff, who hit Trump repeatedly over his ties to Moscow, will go unpunished. Biden knows a reckoning is coming, and he hopes that he, his allies, and his family can escape accountability.

Even now, there is already progress at the border. Some migrants are turning back from their northward journey, worried they will be apprehended and deported by a Trump administration. Asylum grants are down, falling to 36 percent of requests being approved in October, down from more than 50 percent in fiscal 2023. Coincidence? Not likely.

Perhaps most significant is Iran’s decision not to counterattack Israel in the days after the election, with Iranian and Israeli officials telling Sky News that Trump’s win inspired Iran’s caution. Similarly, there are signs that both Ukraine and Russia are ready to discuss a possible end to their terrible war after Putin signaled his willingness to talk to Trump.

Here at home, Trump’s win has not only spurred a significant stock market rally, it also boosted consumer confidence and business confidence. The National Federation of Small Business Optimism Index jumped last month to its highest level since June 2021, boding well for spending and investment.

Trump comes into office this time around knowing how the swamp works; he is ready, and so are the people he is nominating to join him in shaking things up. Education, our military, the U.S. healthcare system — he has big plans to reform them all.

Biden’s ambition was to be an historic president; as Time reported in 2020, the then-candidate wrapped himself in FDR’s mantle. FDR is the only person ever named Person of the Year three times. Maybe it will be Trump, not Biden, who next earns that remarkable accolade.

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.

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