Time Magazine has baffled readers after posting articles fact-checking and debunking various parts of its recent interview with Donald Trump.
Earlier today (December 12), Time Magazine named President-Elect Donald Trump, 78, as its Person of the Year for 2024.
He beat out shortlisted candidates Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales and current Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, as well as other famous faces like Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Russian political leader Yulia Navalnaya.
The lauded magazine’s rationale for selecting Trump - who was also named Time’s Person of the Year in 2016 - was due to the Republican leader experiencing an ‘unparalleled political rebirth’ in 2024.
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"His first term ended in disgrace, with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results culminating in the attack on the US Capitol,” the article read.
"He was shunned by most party officials when he announced his candidacy in late 2022 amid multiple criminal investigations. Little more than a year later, Trump cleared the Republican field, clinching one of the fastest contested presidential primaries in history.”
Time Magazine has issued a series of articles following Trump’s Person of the Year interview
Within minutes of revealing the businessman’s cover interview, the official Time Magazine X account posted a series of links to other articles related to the piece on the company’s site.
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One titled: ‘Fact-Checking Trump’s 2024 Person of the Year Interview’, was posted.
This included a transcript version of the lengthy interview, which was conducted at his Marg-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as various contextual points.
Another link to an article titled ‘Trump Draws False Link Between Vaccines and Autism in Interview’, has also been shared twice with the account’s 19.2 million followers.
While the future POTOS didn’t explicitly say in the original interview that vaccines can cause autism, he did assert that he and politician Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be having a ‘big discussion’ about children’s vaccines.
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When asked if he would approve of an ‘end to childhood vaccination program’, Trump declared: “The autism rate is at a level that nobody ever believed possible.
“If you look at things that are happening, there's something causing it.”
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Time states that when Trump was pressed on the issue, he replied that his administration would be completing rounds of ‘very serious testing’ to assert ‘what's good and what's not good.’
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“But merely by suggesting that there may be a connection between vaccines and autism, Trump has reaffirmed his alignment with the misinformation that has for years fuelled anti-vaccine movements,” writes the publication.
WebMD writes that the idea of vaccines causing autism is little more than a myth, and although ‘more than a dozen studies have tried to find a link, each one has come up empty’.
This isn’t the first time that Trump has discussed the safety of childhood vaccines, telling the Sun Sentinel in 2007: “When I was growing up, autism wasn’t really a factor.
“And now all of a sudden, it’s an epidemic. Everybody has their theory. My theory, and I study it because I have young children, my theory is the shots.
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“We’ve giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.”
During the 2024 Time interview, Trump added that he ‘could’ take some vaccines off the table if he believes them to not be ‘beneficial’—adding his policies are unlikely to be ‘very controversial in the end’.
Lawrence Gostin, director of Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, said that Trump pulling pre-approved vaccines from the market would lead to legal challenges.
He told Time last month: “If the FDA were to have a record of approving a vaccine for many decades and then all of a sudden withdrew that approval, the courts would demand scientific justification for it.”
What do social media users say about Time’s follow-on articles?
Time Magazine’s flurry of articles, including the initial interview with Donald Trump, the dedicated fact-checking line and the false report clarification, have caused a stir on social media.
Taking to X, formerly known as Twitter to have their say, one user commented: “You guys made him Person of the Year.”
A second said: “I remember a time in the past when Time made scientists, doctors, Nobel prize winners, peace activists and people that changed the world for the better as their person of the year.”
“He lies,” remarked someone else. “Just say he lies. How hard is it to call a lie a lie?”
“Community notes gonna fact check your fact checkers,” quipped another user.
A fifth said: “RETWEET if you think Vice President Harris should be the Time Magazine Person of the Year!”
Topics: Donald Trump, Politics, Social Media, US News
Ella Scott