The 44 must-see lines from Donald Trump's 'Person of the Year' interview

Whoa boy.

Donald Trump was named Time magazine’s “Person of the Year” on Thursday morning, the second time he has won the award in the past decade. (Trump was also chosen as the “POY” in 2016.)

(Fun fact: Every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has been named as the man/person of the year at least once by Time with one exception: Gerald Ford.)

As part of Time’s package on the president-elect, they sat down with him for an hour-long interview — and published the full transcript.

I went through it — line by line — and picked out the stuff you really need to see.

I put these “lines” posts behind the paywall for two specific reasons. First, because this sort of work takes a very long time to do. Second, I am the only political journalist that I know of doing it!

My pledge to you: I will continue to closely monitor what Trump says between now and the inauguration and then, obviously, once he is president too.

If that sort of work is important to you, I hope you consider becoming a paid subscriber today. It’s $6 a month or $60 for the year.

To the Lines!

1. “I called it 72 Days of Fury. There were no days off. There were no timeouts.”

He’s talking about the general election campaign. But “72 Days of Fury” could also work as the next “Fast and the Furious” movie. And away we go!

2. “I've been, I've been given credit by, actually, the reporters that followed me, because it was, you know, just, it just was all the time, every day, and we said the right things.”

So weird. I don’t think the reporters that followed him gave him credit because, well, that’s not what reporters do! Do I think he ran a good campaign? Yes.

3. “They don't want to see jails emptied out into our country. They don't want to see people from mental institutions being dismissed from their institutions.”

He says this ALL the time. But, there is zero evidence that other nations are emptying out their jails or their mental institutions and sending those people to the U.S..

4. “They don't want to see, as another example, open borders. They want to see people come in. Everyone's okay with it, and I am certainly. I want to have a lot of people coming, because we're going to, we're going to bring back a lot of jobs. We'll bring record numbers of jobs, and we'll do it through good taxing policy, and, you know, using some basic business intelligence. But we're going to bring back record jobs. Record companies are going to come into our country.”

This is all one thought. And it is a real journey. Also: “Record companies are going to come into our country.”

5. “I had the votes if I needed them, but I had to work very hard.”

Trump is saying that he could have secured the 50 Republicans votes he would have needed to confirm Matt Gaetz as Attorney General. Which he absolutely couldn’t have.

6. “I had the—he was there when I convinced five people to go that were hard no’s, but we want to speak to the President.”

So, Trump had convinced Republican Senators who were opposed to Gaetz to be for him but Gaetz backed out anyway? Nah, bro.

7. “The mandate was massive. Somebody had 129 years in terms of the overall mandate. That's a lot of years, but people respected that.”

Trump won the popular vote by 1.48%. That’s less than Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by in 2016 and far smaller than Joe Biden’s popular vote win in 2020. As I have said, I think the 2024 election was a convincing win for Trump. But it wasn’t some sort of historic mandate.

8. “But I think I have a very good relationship with Senator Thune and the others, all of them.”

Ahem.

9. “Well, sure, I want them to do that. I think—I don't think there are too many. I don't think that— look, everybody has, that's why they have menus in restaurants. You have different choices.”

This is Trump’s answer to whether he will commit to honoring the Senate’s role in accepting or rejecting his nominees. It’s just like a restaurant menu! Relatedly: Ogres are like onions.