One day after Time Magazine named Greta Thunberg “Person of the Year,” President Trump responded with a tweet mocking the 16-year-old climate activist and urging her to “chill.”
“So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, chill!” Trump tweeted Thursday morning.
The Swedish teen took the POTUS’ comments in her stride, however, changing her Twitter profile description to read: “A teenager working on her anger management problem. Currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend.”
Trump was on the five-person shortlist for the honor, which is given to someone deemed to have had the most significant impact on current events over the last year (and not, per common misunderstanding, a statement of approval for the named person). While the magazine’s editorial board selects Person of the Year, since 1998 it has also held an online reader poll.
A few hours after Trump took on Thunberg in his tweet, his re-election campaign tweeted out a reimagined version of the teen’s Time cover, which featured Trump’s head on her body. It was captioned, “When it comes to keeping his promises, there’s only one Person Of The Year.”
Representatives for Time did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the president’s reaction to Thunberg being honored.
In explaining the decision to give Thunberg the title on Wednesday, Time’s editor-in-chief and CEO Edward Felsenthal wrote: “Meaningful change rarely happens without the galvanizing force of influential individuals, and in 2019, the earth’s existential crisis found one in Greta Thunberg.”
He continued, “For sounding the alarm about humanity’s predatory relationship with the only home we have, for bringing to a fragmented world a voice that transcends backgrounds and borders, for showing us all what it might look like when a new generation leads, Greta Thunberg is Time’s 2019 Person of the Year.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has taken issue with the annual announcement since he assumed the presidency. In 2017, Trump claimed before the reveal of the winner that he “took a pass” on “probably” winning, causing Time to issue a tweet saying, “The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year.”
It’s also not the first time Trump’s campaign has doctored a photo or video. Earlier this week, they superimposed the President’s head on supervillain Thanos’ body in a scene from “Avengers: Endgame.” In the scene, Thanos believes he’s won, only to be defeated in the end.