Read on Twitter
The answer to this question is complicated, but I’ll give it a shot—I suspect without a combination of some key factors, Trump would have lost in 2016: https://twitter.com/john_demmler/status/1286764367988457476
Have you ever seen footage of Trump from Election Day 2016, when he found out he won? When he met with Obama as president-elect? He never expected to win! I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he never really wanted to.
Mark Burnett created the Donald Trump who ran for president in 2016 and sold this version of him to the American people on his hit network show ‘The Apprentice’ for more than a decade—propping up the fiction of Trump as a successful businessman.
Hillary—more specifically, how widely she was disliked—is probably as much to blame as anything. It (apparent in polling) was a potentially fatal flaw for her campaign from the outset and I’m sure she and her campaign were aware of that risk. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/31/a-record-number-of-americans-now-dislike-hillary-clinton/
Despite what our president and his supporters will tell you, an enormous Russian election interference plot to aid the Trump campaign unfolded in 2016—targetting specific voters in areas important for an (eventual) Electoral College victory. https://www.wired.com/story/russian-facebook-ads-targeted-us-voters-before-2016-election/
If Russian interference turned the tide in any way in 2016, then Cambridge Analytica—AND Facebook (if there’s meant to be any meaningful difference)—were complicit. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/03/22/all-the-ways-trumps-campaign-was-aided-by-facebook-ranked-by-importance/
Russian interference came in other flavors, too—for example, email (hacks &) dumps via Wikileaks.
Remember, “Russia, if you’re listening...”? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-wikileaks/wikileaks-faces-u-s-probes-into-its-2016-election-role-and-cia-leaks-sources-idUSKBN1E12J2
Remember, “Russia, if you’re listening...”? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-wikileaks/wikileaks-faces-u-s-probes-into-its-2016-election-role-and-cia-leaks-sources-idUSKBN1E12J2
Speaking of emails, while I don’t mean to imply any complicity—it’s hard to envision a worse October Surprise than Comey re-opening the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Not as critical, but it just might’ve been the knockout blow.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/14/politics/key-dates-fbi-hillary-clinton-emails/index.html
Not as critical, but it just might’ve been the knockout blow.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/14/politics/key-dates-fbi-hillary-clinton-emails/index.html
Conclusion (because this thread COULD go on): Imagine you’re Hillary Clinton coming down the stretch run of the 2016 Election with a slight lead over Donald Trump, then consider all of the above...and it’s not hard to conceive of what unfolded at the end of the election.
TL;DR—Without his (FICTIONAL) “Successful Businessman & Billionaire” gravitas, Russian interference via social media (& Facebook/CA), email hacks/Wikileaks and Hillary Clinton’s major UNpopularity, Donald Trump’s narrow Electoral College victory in 2016 never happens.
