Time magazine has come under fire over its selection of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as its Persons of the Year, with critics wondering why the honor wasn't bestowed on physicians and vaccine developers battling the coronavirus.
Fox News contributor Joe Concha, whose wife is an emergency room doctor, told "America's Newsroom" Friday it was clear frontline health care workers were more deserving than Biden and Harris, the 2020 Democratic ticket that defeated President Trump in November.
"Time magazine, which is a shell of itself -- laughable, quite frankly in terms of its partisanship -- gives it to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, because that was the politically correct thing to do and because it's what their readers wanted from a comfort food perspective," Concha said.
Frontline workers and White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci were honored as "Guardians of the Year" instead.
TIME MAGAZINE NAMES BIDEN, HARRIS ITS PERSON OF THE YEAR IN PROFILE FIERCELY CRITICAL OF TRUMP
Washington Examiner managing editor Jay Caruso called it a "boring" choice, saying the recognition should instead have gone to Albert Bourla and Stéphane Bancel. Bourla and Bancel are the CEOs of pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Moderna, respectively. Both companies developed vaccines in 2020 that could pave the way to a return to normalcy in 2021.
"This doesn't make any sense and everyone knows it," wrote Washington Examiner writer Jerry Dunleavy who noted that Time's 2014 Persons of the Year were fighters of Ebola, which has proven far less deadly than coronavirus.
"A vaccine was developed in record time, frontline workers busted their butts for everyone else during a pandemic, a sitting president made multiple historic middle east [sic] peace deals, but give it to the guy who spent most of it in his basement. Sure," Republican congressional aide Nate Madden wrote.
"Time Magazine doesn't pick frontline workers as persons of the year who've given and sacrificed so much this year," NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck wrote. "Instead, they show their far-left tilt (and pure hatred for the 74 million Americans who voted for President Trump) by picking Joe Biden and Kamala Harris."
The Washington Free Beacon, in a tongue-in-cheek piece, quipped Trump should have been given the award every year of his presidency before adding, "What about the frontline health care workers who, like Trump, put their lives on the line every day to combat a global pandemic? What about the scientists who, under Trump's leadership, invented a revolutionary vaccine in record time?"
In articles about why they chose Biden and Harris, TIME's staff praised them effusively and criticized Trump. Editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal said the pair were recognized for “changing the American story, for showing that the forces of empathy are greater than the furies of division, for sharing a vision of healing in a grieving world.”
For the cover story on Biden and Harris, Charlotte Alter wrote they "demonstrate that differences don’t have to be divides" after four years of "Hurricane Trump tearing through America, ripping through institutions, chewing up norms and spitting them out."
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The winner of the U.S. presidential election has received the honor every four years since 2000, though this year marked the first time a vice president or vice president-elect has been named a Time Person of the Year.
Harris will be the first woman and first woman of color to be vice president in American history.