10 Other Deplorables Who Won TIME Person of the Year

Since its inception in 1927, TIME Magazine has named almost every U.S. president “Person of the Year” for being the “leader of the free world,” in its own words. Only four women have ever earned the title. Another reason Donald Trump’s win this year was no surprise: many of the winners have been tyrants and among the most hated leaders of their time.

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A quick list of the other deadbeats who have been graced with the same title:

1. Chiang Kai-shek and Soong May-ling, 1937

The autocratic leader of the Chinese Republic massacred communists in Shanghai and Guangzhou and political dissidents in Taiwan. He was a major enemy of Mao Zedong.

"Under this Man & Wife the traditionally disunited Chinese people — millions of whom seldom used the word 'China' in the past — have slowly been given national consciousness," wrote TIME in its cover story. "No woman in the West holds so great a position as Mme Chiang Kai-shek holds in China." The magazine later wrote, “It was the crusade to impose unity on the sprawling nation of China that occupied Chiang throughout his career — a task at which he proved ultimately unsuccessful.”

One of the most notorious leaders in history, Hitler purged Jews, LGBT people, gypsies, Slavs, non-Europeans, political dissidents and other religious minorities from Europe and propelled fascism to the international stage.

“Greatest single news event of 1938 took place on September 29, when four statesmen met at the Führerhaus, in Munich, to redraw the map of Europe. The three visiting statesmen at that historic conference were Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain, Premier Edouard Daladier of France, and Dictator Benito Mussolini of Italy. But by all odds the dominating figure at Munich was the German host, Adolf Hitler.

Führer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy & Air Force, Chancellor of the Third Reich, Herr Hitler reaped on that day at Munich the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless foreign policy he had pursued for five and a half years.

When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe's defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern Europe by getting a ‘hands-off’ promise from powerful Britain (and later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938's Man of the Year.”

Widely lauded for leading the Allied nations’ fight against Hitler, Churchill also firmly supported killing and using chemical weapons against “uncivilized tribes,” especially in India and northern Russia, and proudly set out on "a lot of silly little wars against barbarous peoples," including putting down revolutionary uprisings in Kenya and Malaysia.

“‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ Those eleven burning words summed up the nature of Britain’s war, turned Britain’s back on the weaknesses of the past, set her face toward the unknown future. Because of them the rest of that speech has been forgotten. It should not be forgotten, for it is not only a great example of Winston Churchill’s eloquence, but the epitome of the movement which he leads.” (1941)

“Winston Churchill had a different function: his chief contribution was to warn of rocks ahead, and to lead the rescue parties. He was not the man who designed the ship; what he did was to launch the lifeboats. That a free world survived in 1950, with a hope of more progress and less calamity, was due in large measure to his exertions.” (1950)

The name brings chills to communists and Algerian liberation fighters, as the firm-fisted French leader that came to power through a coup promising Algeria's continued status as a colony. While he was forced by Algeria's liberation struggle to abandon claims to the country, he subjected former colonies to French economic subordination, professing French superiority and exceptionalism.

"A Time for Miracles. Despite this initial record of accomplishment, de Gaulle has a long way to go. In fact, his very conditions for returning to power — that he be summoned on his own unquestioned terms — made it necessary for circumstances to be almost beyond retrieving before he would take over. The slope that lies before him is steep. Wonders Socialist Guy Mollet: ‘Frenchmen expect miracles of De Gaulle. But can he work miracles?’"

Kissinger is often called a war criminal for carpet bombing Cambodia, supporting autocratic coups in Latin America and presiding over U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Laos as secretary of state.

“It was a year of visitations and bold ventures with Russia and China, of a uniquely personal triumph at the polls for the President, of hopes raised and lately dashed for peace in Viet Nam. Foreign policy reigned preeminent, and was in good part the base for the landslide election victory at home. And U.S. foreign policy, for good or ill, was undeniably the handiwork of two people: Richard Milhous Nixon and Henry Alfred Kissinger, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs. For what they accomplished in the world, what was well begun—and inescapably, too, their prolonged and so far indecisive struggle with the Viet Nam tragedy—the two are Men of the Year.”

The U.S. president who came the closest to being impeached, Nixon approved bombing campaigns in Vietnam and Cambodia, CIA operations in Chile and increased arms sales to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iran. He also declared the War on Drugs.

“On the war, on China, on welfare reform, on devaluation, he moved the country to abandon positions long outdated and toward steps long overdue.” (1972)

“It was a year of visitations and bold ventures with Russia and China, of a uniquely personal triumph at the polls for the President, of hopes raised and lately dashed for peace in Viet Nam. Foreign policy reigned preeminent, and was in good part the base for the landslide election victory at home. And U.S. foreign policy, for good or ill, was undeniably the handiwork of two people: Richard Milhous Nixon and Henry Alfred Kissinger, the President’s Assistant for National Security Affairs. For what they accomplished in the world, what was well begun—and inescapably, too, their prolonged and so far indecisive struggle with the Viet Nam tragedy—the two are Men of the Year.” (1973)

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The intellectual leader of current conservatism in the U.S., Reagan slashed public spending while bumping up military spending and cutting taxes. He was also responsible for the bombing of Libya, the Iran-Contra affair and the persecution of communists, both while president of the U.S. and as the head of the Screen Actors Guild.

“In naming him Man of the Year for 1980, TIME described President Reagan's mandate: "To control inflation, to reduce unnecessary governmental influence in private lives and in business, to reassert America's prominence in the world." (1980)

“In shaping plans for the future, every statesman in the world and very nearly every private citizen has to calculate what may come of the face-off between the countries whose leaders—one operating in full public view, the other as a mysterious presence hidden by illness—share the power to decide whether there will be any future at all. Those leaders, Presidents Ronald Wilson Reagan of the United States and Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, are TIME’S Men of the Year.” (1984)

As a leader of the far-right Republicans and congressman, Gingrich worked to slash welfare, cut taxes and threaten health care spending.

“Leaders make things possible. Exceptional leaders make them inevitable. Newt Gingrich belongs in the category of the exceptional. All year--ruthlessly, brilliantly, obnoxiously--he worked at hammering together inevitabilities: a balanced federal budget, for one. Not so long ago, the idea of a balanced budget was a marginal, we'll-get-to-it-someday priority. Other urgent work needed doing: the Clintons' health-care program, for example, which would have installed elaborate new bureaucratic machinery. Today, because of Newt Gingrich, the question is not whether a balanced-budget plan will come to pass but when.

Gingrich has changed the center of gravity.”

Bush's biggest legacy was the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but he also oversaw the hated No Child Left Behind Act, the Patriot Act and a constitutional amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage, among the continuing rollback of government regulations that precipitated the 2008 financial crash.

“Stripped of every winning Republican issue–the cold war, crime, the economy–he proceeded to run on Democratic ones–education, health care, Social Security. Lampooned as a feckless frat boy, he ran a more disciplined race than we have seen in years; he made his inexperience a virtue, his vagueness a shield, his sins a sign of sincerity.” (2000)

“Whatever spirit of cooperation that survives in his second term may have to be found among his opponents; he has made it clear he’s not about to change his mind as he takes on Social Security and the tax code in pursuit of his ‘ownership society.’ So unfolds the strange and surprising and high-stakes decade of Bush.

For sharpening the debate until the choices bled, for reframing reality to match his design, for gambling his fortunes–and ours–on his faith in the power of leadership, George W. Bush is TIME’s 2004 Person of the Year.” (2004)

The former mayor of New York City, Guiliani and his Broken Windows, tough on crime policies served to bring police brutality and racism to new levels in the city. Public schools also took a turn for the worst in a wave of privatization.

“There is a bright magic at work when one great leader reaches into the past and finds another waiting to guide him. From midmorning on Sept. 11, when Giuliani and fellow New Yorkers were fleeing for their lives, the mayor had been thinking of Churchill.

With the President out of sight for most of that day, Giuliani became the voice of America. Every time he spoke, millions of people felt a little better. His words were full of grief and iron, inspiring New York to inspire the nation.

After two terms, his place in history seemed secure: great mayor, not-so-great guy. The first Republican to run the town in a generation, he had restored New York's spirit, cutting crime by two-thirds, moving 691,000 people off the welfare rolls, boosting property values and incomes in neighborhoods rich and poor, redeveloping great swaths of the city.”