Trump is Time person of the year 2016

Every year, TIME editors select the person — or idea — who has most influenced the news and the world in the past year, for good or ill.

“So which is it this year: Better or worse? The challenge for Donald Trump is how profoundly the country disagrees about the answer,” TIME managing editor Nancy Gibbs wrote in a magazine essay.

Trump beat out 10 other finalists, including his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. TIME declared Clinton their runner-up, and she was also the top pick among  viewers.

“For reminding America that demagoguery feeds on despair and that truth is only as powerful as the trust in those who speak it, for empowering a hidden electorate by mainstreaming its furies and live-streaming its fears, and for framing tomorrow’spolitical culture by demolishing yesterday’s, Donald Trump is TIME’s 2016 Person of the Year,” Gibbs wrote.

Last year’s recipient was German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Trump was a runner-up. The year before that, 2014, the Person of the Year were the Ebola fighters.

The magazine has made the designation every year since 1927, when aviator Charles Lindbergh was chosen as the first Man of the Year. The title was amended to Person of the Year in 1999.

Over its history, TIME has bestowed the title to many presidents, political leaders and industry trailblazers who often view the designation as an honor.

 However, the magazine also has selected notorious recipients in the past, including Adolf Hitler in 1938, Joseph Stalin in 1939 and 1942, and Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, because of the impact they had on the world at the time.