Joe Biden, Kamala Harris Named 'Time' Person Of The Year

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President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were named Person of the Year for 2020 by Time. / AP

Updated at 11:15 a.m. ET

President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris defeated Donald Trump twice this year: once at the polls and again for Time's Person of the Year.

Time's choice to name Biden and Harris over Trump, who was also shortlisted, marks the first time a president-elect and vice president-elect have appeared together on a Person of the Year cover. Harris is also the first vice president-elect to get the designation.

"If Donald Trump was a force for disruption and division over the past four years, Biden and Harris show where the nation is heading: a blend of ethnicities, lived experiences and worldviews that must find a way forward together if the American experiment is to survive," the magazine's Editor-in-Chief Edward Felsenthal said.

Biden reacted to the news on Twitter.

"I'm honored to be Person of the Year with @KamalaHarris and grateful to be on this list with so many extraordinary folks," he wrote. "From front line workers to racial justice organizers, Americans met this year with strength, fortitude, and an unflinching belief in a brighter tomorrow."

Harris is the country's first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president-elect. Biden, who at 78 will be the oldest person ever to assume the presidency, is also the oldest ever to be named Person of the Year by the magazine. He follows Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist who last year became the youngest ever to receive the honor — at age 16.

Biden and Harris made the cut after topping a shortlist that included the movement for racial justice, Dr. Anthony Fauci and front-line workers in the fight against COVID-19.

But the choice of Biden isn't exactly a surprise, as selecting a president-elect for Person of the Year is a nearly nine-decade-old tradition at the magazine. The first president-elect named Person of the Year (then "Man of the Year") was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1932, for his New Deal plan to bring America out of the Great Depression.

NPR's Reese Oxner contributed to this report.

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