Unique among ‘Person of the Year’ designees, Donald Trump gets a fact-check from Time magazine

Time magazine gave Donald Trump something it has never done for a Person of the Year designee: a lengthy fact-check of claims he made in an accompanying interview.

The fact-check accompanies a transcript of what the president-elect told the newsmagazine’s journalists. Described as a “12 minute read,” it calls into question 15 separate statements that Trump made.

It was the second time Trump earned the Time accolade; he also won in 2016, the first year he was elected president. Time editors said it wasn’t a particularly hard choice over other finalists Kamala Harris, Elon Musk, Benjamin Netanyahu and Kate Middleton.

Time said Friday that no other Person of the Year has been fact-checked in the near-century that the magazine has annually written about the figure that has had the greatest impact on the news. But it has done the same for past interviews with the likes of Joe Biden, Netanyahu and Trump.

Such corrections have been a sticking point for Trump and his team in the past, most notably when ABC News did it during his only debate with Democrat Kamala Harris this fall. There was no immediate response to a request for comment on Friday.

In the piece, Time called into question statements Trump made about border security, autism and the size of a crowd at one of his rallies. When the president-elect talked about the “massive” mandate he had received from voters, Time pointed out that former President Barack Obama won more electoral votes the two times he had run for president.

The magazine also questioned Trump’s claim that he would do interviews with anyone who asked during the campaign, if he had the time. The candidate rejected a request to speak to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” the magazine said.

“In the final months of his campaign, Trump prioritized interviews with podcasts over mainstream media,” reporters Simmone Shah and Leslie Dickstein wrote.

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David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social.

David Bauder, The Associated Press