Time magazine names Biden and Harris ‘Person of the Year’

WASHINGTON — Time magazine has named President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris its “Person of the Year.”

Time’s editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal says Biden and Harris won the honor for “changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving world.”

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris appear on Time Magazine’s 2020 Person of the Year cover, in this portrait by Jason Seiler, obtained by Reuters December 11, 2020. Time/Handout via REUTERS/Illustration

Felsenthal notes, “Every elected President since FDR has at some point during his term been a Person of the Year, nearly a dozen of those in a presidential election year. This is the first time we have included a Vice President.”

Time’s other Person of the Year candidates were President Donald Trump; frontline health care workers and Dr. Anthony Fauci; and the movement for racial justice.

Also Thursday, Time named the Korean boy band BTS its Entertainer of the Year and named Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James its Athlete of the Year.