Don't call it a 'comeback': 'I've always been here,' Trump tells Time after being named 'Person of the Year'

On Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump was named Time magazine’s "Person of the Year." In the wide-ranging interview accompanying the recognition, Trump said he didn’t view his road to his second White House term as a "comeback," saying that "I’ve always been here."

Trump was asked, "Everyone across the political spectrum recognizes the nature of your comeback, the historical nature of comeback, your resilience. What do you understand about the American psyche that your opponents do not?"

In response, the President-elect said, "See, I don't view it as a comeback. And people have said it was the greatest comeback in political history, and beyond even political history plus. They said, add sports and add everything else. But I don't view it that way. I think I ran a great campaign. I think I was popular."

He said he thought he "did a very good job the first term," and that even with Covid at the end of his term, "we did a very, very good job that people are starting to recognize."

"But you take a look at those first few years, we've never had an economy even even close to that. So I don't, I don't view it as a comeback. I know it's considered that. I should allow it to be that, and I will allow it to be that. But, you know, come back from what? I've always been here, you know," Trump said. 

Trump was asked what his father, Fred, would think of the comeback, Trump replied, "I think he maybe would not call it a comeback. He would have said it's just Donald." Trump was also asked what his father would have thought about his son’s political career, to which he replied that he "would have been amazed."

When asked what Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ "worst mistakes" during her failed campaign were, Trump said, "Taking the assignment. Number one, because you have to know what you're good at."

He told Time that he did not "like to think" about the possibility of losing when asked whether there was a moment he thought he would lose, saying, "The power of positive thinking, right?"

"But there were some moments when, you know, there was, there was some bad things done in the campaign. There were a lot of fake polls. They were absolutely fake," he said, noting the example of a pollster in Iowa, who pinned Trump at being just four points ahead of Kamala. "She did it up four. That was a big story, because I was only up four and then she did where I was down three, and that became headlines all over the place just before the election."

Trump said a dark moment during the campaign was the Kamala Harris 60 minutes interview, where "she gave a really horrible answer. That was a bad answer. And they took that answer and replaced it, and this is her speaking, and they replaced it with another answer from a half an hour later in the interview that had nothing to do, but it was a much better answer. That's really dishonest."

He said that a "tactical mistake" that Harris made was "when she wouldn't talk to anybody, it shone a light on her."