President Donald Trump didn’t make Time magazine’s choice as Person of the Year this time around — but he was named “Loser of the Year” by Germany’s respected news magazine Der Spiegel.
Der Spiegel awarded the informal title in an article on Thursday, the same day Time named both President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris its 2020 Person of the Year.
Der Spiegel, which boasts a circulation of some 870,000 readers, bashes Trump for refusing to accept defeat in the presidential election. He was “never concerned with the common good, but always with one thing — himself,” write journalists Roland Nelles and Ralf Neukirch in an article headlined “Der Verlierer des Jahres” (The Loser of the Year).
“Nothing is normal under Trump,” the article adds. “He refuses to admit defeat. Instead, he speaks of massive electoral fraud, although there is no evidence for it. The whole thing is not surprising. Trump’s presidency ends as it began: Without decency and without dignity.”
The article also shreds the GOP for its utter failure to stand up to Trump and his intentionally divisive politics. “The formerly proud party of Abraham Lincoln has degenerated into a collection of spineless yes-men,” the magazine notes.
Trump is not popular with Germans. Some 85% of Germans have no confidence that the president would do the “right thing” in world affairs, according to a 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center.
In 2018, Der Spiegel portrayed Trump as a middle finger flipping off Europe. It’s “time for Europe to join the resistance ... against America,” the magazine urged.
“Trump is only proficient in destruction,” Der Spiegel noted then. “The West as we once knew it no longer exists. It is impossible to overstate what Trump has dismantled.”
German-American relations can “only get better” with Biden, a top German official told Der Spiegel on Friday. Biden is “predictable, reliable and anything but a hothead,” the article noted. “The most important thing is that he’s not Trump.”