Display of the 2016 US presidential election on German television

Hardly any presidential election had such a medial presence as the one between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Even on German TV stations broadcast during the election night up into the morning hours, observing the count.
I switched on ZDF when it was most likely but not sure that Donald Trump would win the election. The question raised over and over again by the hosts was: “How could this happen?” I got quite angry about this question and the proximate long-lasting analysis; because the answer is so obvious. 80 years ago, there was a similar phenomena in Germany: A man promising a better life without saying in detail how he would implement that. Hitler, as well as Trump, managed it to address and win over the people who were unsatisfied with their lives and the current government. So it is really needless to ask “How could this happen?”. The first question asked should rather be “What can we do to prevent that the right populist party Alternative für Deutschland moving into the German Bundestag?” since we got the election next year. There is a realistic chance they will succeed after the rising number of xenophobic attacks in the past years; this party is already part of some state parliament.

Another thing that bothered me was the presentation of Hillary Clinton in a special broadcast, showed on ZDF on the day after the election as well. (https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/zdfspezial/zdfspezial-amerika-hat-gewaehlt-100.html)
Clinton, like in some broadcasts during the election campaign, was illustrated as the brave, strong woman, who ran to become the first female president of the US and fought and in the end lost against the “evil”, racist and misogynic Trump. There was no mention about Clinton’s close contact to Wall Street. This simple subdivision in “good” and “evil” was just too unilateral. Of course it is awful that a racist, misogynic, homophobic man will now be US president , supported by so many people in the country; nevertheless I think Clinton would not have been a good alternative, but just the less worse.

Note: I also wanted to add the web address leading to the ZDF media centre and the broadcast that was aired in the morning, but unfortunately it is no longer available.