Not surprisingly, Pres.-elect Donald Trump is TIME’s Person of the Year. Not surprisingly, he’s not happy about the caption on the cover which reads, “President of the Divided States of America.”
First the decision, as explained by TIME’s editor Nancy Gibbs on the Today show:
“When have we ever seen a single individual who has so defied expectations, broken the rules, violated norms, beaten not one, but two political parties on the way to winning an election that he entered with 100-1 odds against him? I don’t think that we have ever seen one person operating in such an unconventional way have an impact on the events of the year.”
After the announcement Matt Lauer talked with Trump in an 11-minute phone interview. “It’s a great honor. It’s a very important magazine,” Trump said. Later, about the caption, Trump added, “I think putting ‘divided’ is snarky, but I didn’t do anything to divide.”
Other highlights of Lauer’s interview:
How close is he to choosing a Secretary of State: “I think fairly close. I think next week will be the time that I announce it. I have some other big announcements coming up today and actually tomorrow.”
Does Mitt Romney still have a shot at the job: “Yes, he does. I’ve spoken to him a lot. We’ve come a long way together. We had some tremendous difficulty together and now I think we’ve come a long way.”
On Boeing and Air Force One: “We’re going to get the prices down. If we don’t get the prices down, we’re not going to order them.”
On his quiet June stock sale: “I felt that I was very much going to be winning and I think I would have a tremendous — a really a conflict of interest owning all of these different companies.”
On Tweeting: “I think I am very restrained… I get [information] out much faster than a press release. I get it out much more honestly than dealing with dishonest reporters because so many reporters are dishonest.”
On Alec Baldwin‘s impression of him on Saturday Night Live: “It’s not a good show anymore. There’s nothing funny about it, the skits are terrible. I like Alec, but his imitation of me is mean-spirited and not very good. I do like him and like him as an actor, but I don’t think that his imitation of me gets me at all and it’s meant to be very mean-spirited, which is very biased. Frankly, the way the show is going now, and you look at the kind of work they’re doing, who knows how long that show is going to be on? It’s a terrible show.”
