The Truth Behind the Election: How Donald Trump was elected
With the conclusion of the presidential election, much of the nation has been left in a daze. How did Donald J. Trump — producer of The Apprentice and nationwide casino owner — become president of our nation?
Many students on campus have yet to figure out an answer to this question, giving up on finding one as the outcome has already been delivered. Along with them, much of the nation has reacted in the same way. But this only points to a larger problem that has yet to be properly addressed — ignorance.
Considering these uncommonly-known factors resulted in a big change for the nation, they should be a shared knowledge among citizens.
However, a recent story The Washington Post broke Friday the 9th says one component in the election couldn’t be blamed on our ignorance as citizens, but rather the secretive nature of some of the heads of our nation.
According to reports, a CIA assessment revealed Russia played a hand in helping Trump’s victory. The organization accused Moscow of interfering by hacking political organizations, such as cyber-intrusions into DNC computers and those of other Democratic individuals in order to help Trump become president-elect.
After this discovery, Democratic leaders agreed to take the threat seriously, but Republicans heads, like Mitch McConnell, urged to not take this public as the allegations were serious and the election was nearing its end.
However, aside from this new part to the story, there have been plenty of triggers for Trump’s election, which a lot of the public has clearly missed. These reasons are supported by fact and we should at least chew on these thoughts before taking the result sitting down.
First, while on the subject of intruding the DNC, let us reflect on the DNC WikiLeaks scandal — forgetting about the Russian involvement for a moment. The leaking of DNC emails, which told a story of the DNC unfairly pushing for Clinton, was something that could only happen thanks to today’s technology.
Of course, it shouldn’t be able to happen, however. It was quite literally the technological equivalent of Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Yet, there were no repercussions to those who leaked the information.
But just because technology makes this possible, doesn’t make it any different from what we would otherwise call it — an unauthorized break-in. Still, this information only served to hurt Clinton, who was from then on referred to as an athlete on steroids of sorts.
Then, there’s the issue of media incentives. During this election cycle, news channel views skyrocketed like nothing else, because who could miss out on seeing Trump brutally kick people out of his rallies? For news, this meant more profit. Particularly, clips of Trump’s journey along the campaign trail drew lots of eyes and generated more and more money.
A matter of fact, just in September, CNN is reported to have charged advertisers 40 times the usual rate to air a 30-second clip during the GOP debate. This means, when stations caught onto how profitable Trump was, they did the advertising for him — Trump was their piggy bank. Need more money? Cut to Trump. Trump earned much of the air time, granting him more time to win over viewers. Turns out he was right I suppose — all publicity is good publicity.
Along with this, a permissiveness in lying also had a hand in helping Trump along. During all this time that Trump was on air, he often lied, giving fake facts and making baseless accusations. He lied 58 times in the first presidential debate alone. He has denied his own past statements and spewed nonsense such as saying Hillary Clinton created the birther movement.
It’s simply impossible to catch his every lie and correct him on the spot, but it’s a shame so many lies were told that some just had to slip during debates. There just wasn’t enough time, but this is a large part of what made for the wide spread dissemination of false information among the public. That, and another big helper in Trump’s case — social media.
Social media has been so widely used to spread fake news, an analysis by Buzzfeed showed that fake election stories from hoax sites and blogs achieved more engagement than content from real news sites. Keep in mind — the majority of these stories were pro-Trump.
While the average citizen may easily differentiate real and fake news, one must not forget some people really don’t know what to believe, and will either believe the fake news or at least spread it in the hopes that someone else will.
I mean, who will ever forget the little old lady who told John McCain “he’s an Arab” in reference to Obama? This alone proves how gullible a portion of this nation is.
So, often bumping into headlines such as “Clinton sold weapons to ISIS” and “The Pope Endorsed Trump” isn’t as harmless as it seems. The fact that these fake news stories are given time on air by genuine media outlets doesn’t help either. Why propagate nonsense?
Also, everyone should know that 8% of millenials voted for a third party candidate, compared to 3% in 2012. While it wasn’t completely shocking considering a national poll by Quinnipiac University reported 60% of millenials said they would consider voting for a third party candidate, it did have an effect. As Hillary’s campaign stressed, voting for a third-party candidate was tantamout to voting for Trump.
Why? Well, in certain states third-party votes are what helped secure the Republican victory. The race was tight and the electoral college vote was what became important, hence the significance of such lost votes depending on the state. Many are still wondering how Trump won Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania was one of these very states.
Finally, factor in how FBI Director James Comey promoted the assault of Clinton’s character, calling her “careless” and coming out with newly discovered emails up until a week before the election. Over and over, because of Comey, an untrustworthy image of Clinton was constantly reinforced to the public, labeling her as crooked. Of course, these accusations proved to be completely untrue when Comey updated congress two days before the election saying the bureau’s review of the emails found no evidence of criminality. But by then, it was all too late.
Yet, despite all these aids to Trump’s victory, Clinton still somehow won the popular vote. One can only imagine what could have been without the obstacles.
