Five Men Made Trump President in 2016

How did Trump, a deeply flawed candidate who stumbled often during the 2016 campaign, win the presidential election?

There are familiar explanations for the outcome. Analysts point out that Trump blamed China for the decline of manufacturing in the USA and he criticized immigration. Trump excited voters with promises to create new jobs and “Make America Great Again.” Also, Clinton failed to give adequate attention to voters in the northern “Rust Belt.” 

But you hear almost nothing about the point explored in this podcast – that just five men effectively undermined Hillary Clinton’s campaign. They played major roles in delivering the 2016 election to Donald Trump.

Transcript

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This year, Hillary Clinton made several notable speeches and public remarks criticizing President Trump and his administration. She called the president's approach to Ukraine disgraceful, the administration's Iran diplomacy a joke, and she warned that the administration's budget proposal for 2027 would harm American families. Hillary Clinton's thoughtful and informed analyses of challenges at home and abroad leave us wondering why is this talented person on the sidelines while Donald Trump, with his numerous flaws, is shaping the nation's domestic and international policies. How did Trump, who stumbled often during the 2016 presidential campaign, managed to defeat Hillary Clinton? Well, there are familiar explanations for Trump's victory in 2016. Trump blamed China for the decline of manufacturing in the USA. He excited voters with promises to create new jobs and make America great again. Also, Clinton failed to give adequate attention to voters in the northern Rust Belt states, et cetera, et cetera. We've heard them all. But you hear almost nothing about the point explored in this podcast, that just five men severely wounded the Clinton campaign. Their involvement played a major role in delivering the 2016 election to Donald Trump. Welcome to History is Relevant. I'm Robert Brent Toplin. It may seem strange that a few individuals could affect the outcome of a presidential election involving 50 states and more than 136 million popular votes. But there is substantial evidence suggesting they did, in fact, affect the outcome. It would not have taken many votes to change the results. Trump won by squeaking past Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. His combined advantage over Clinton in those three swing states was 79,646. That means that a mere 40,000 votes for Hillary Clinton distributed to her benefit among the three states would have given her the presidency. And really either number, 40,000 or 79,000 plus, is a small number in comparison to all the votes cast for president in those three states, which totaled well over 13 million. The five men under consideration here did a lot to give Trump the victory. In fact, actions by any one of them could have given Trump the presidency. And when the involvement of all five is considered together, the influence is substantial. Absent their participation, Clinton's win could have been huge. Democrats probably would have taken the Senate, too. Down ballot candidates benefit greatly if their party's presidential candidate is successful. The five men that made an impact are Rupert Murdoch, David Pecker, Michael Cohen, Vladimir Putin, and James Comey. Murdoch and Pecker were influential opinion makers in the mass media. Michael Cohen was Donald Trump's personal lawyer. Vladimir Putin was, of course, president of Russia. And James Comey was the director of the FBI. So let's start with Rupert Murdoch. He was the boss of a huge media empire that promoted conservative causes. He influenced American politics in 2016 through his organization's pro-Trump coverage and critical treatment of Hillary Clinton. Rupert Murdoch had a long record of putting a thumb on the scales in media coverage. Back in February 2003, Roy Greenslade did a broad survey of Murdoch-owned newspapers, including titles in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. Greenslade was a journalist with The Guardian, one of the UK's top national newspapers. He noted Murdoch's quote, unerring ability to choose editors across the world who think just like him. All editors sang from the same hymn sheet, wrote Greenslade. Fox News, another Murdoch enterprise, operated in a related manner. That television network sharply favored Republicans. Trump and Murdoch had a long-standing relationship. For years, Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka, served as trustee for two Murdoch daughters. Rupert Murdoch mentored Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner, in business affairs. Murdoch's relationship with Donald Trump went through some rough patches before Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee. But then Murdoch visited Trump at his international golf links in Scotland. The two men embraced, renewing their friendship. From that point on, the vast media outlets in Murdoch's domain portrayed Donald Trump enthusiastically. One of Fox News stars, Sean Hannity, praised Trump in such effusive language that Hannity sounded like Trump's campaign manager. In December 2017, more than a year after the election, Harvard's Schorenstein Center on the Media, Politics, and Public Policy published a study that analyzed news coverage in the 2016 campaign by the nation's major television networks and newspapers. Among all those sources, Fox News had by far the highest percentage of positive treatments of Trump and the highest percentage of negative treatments of Clinton. On to David Pecker and Michael Cohen, who had a connection because both played important roles in the concealment of Trump's alleged sexual relations with a porn star and a Playboy model. Court documents revealed that David Pecker, CEO of American Media Incorporated, and Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer, suppressed information about the relationships from the public by providing payments of $130,000 to the adult film star and $150,000 to the Playboy model. Pecker received immunity from federal prosecution for providing details. Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges, including campaign finance violations associated with payments to the women. Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer, pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and other actions. In 2018, he acknowledged arranging and concealing hush money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall, and Cohen served his sentence in federal prison and in home confinement. And eventually he became a key prosecution witness. Some election analysts said it made really little difference that claims about Trump's alleged sexual encounters had become public before the election. They note that the Access Hollywood tape hit the news on October 7, 2016, just weeks before the election. Presidential candidate Trump is heard on the hot microphone having a lewd conversation with then Access Hollywood host Billy Bush. And ordinarily, that kind of revelation could wreck a presidential candidate's prospects. Yet, in this case, Trump survived. The Access Hollywood recording did not have a powerful impact on Trump's candidacy. Why? In large part, because of the election mischief promoted by Vladimir Putin, the fourth of these five individuals. Friday, October 7, 2016, should have been a disastrous day for candidate Trump, because at 1240 p.m., the Obama administration released intelligence agency reports that accused the Russians of election interference to benefit Trump. At 4.03 p.m. the same day, the Washington Post broke the story about access Hollywood tapes. If American voters had time to digest these two extraordinary news reports, Trump's campaign might have tanked. But just a half hour later, evidently thanks to Russia's involvement, WikiLeaks released a vast tranche of emails taken from the accounts of Democratic leader John Podesta. Among the communications were details about Hillary Clinton's unpublished speeches to banks and information about her campaign strategies and about her emails. This news quickly shifted public attention to charges of indiscretion by Hillary Clinton. Suddenly, the Democratic candidates' emails became a major focus of public discussions. Revelations about Russia's role later emerged. Reports indicated that Russian operatives created fake online personas, such as Gusafer 2.0 and DC Leaks, and passed the stolen emails to WikiLeaks, which then published them. Special counsel Robert Muller detailed this operation in a July 2018 indictment, charging 12 Russian intelligence officers with conspiracy to commit computer crimes and stage the release of the stolen documents. Email mischief represented just one of numerous actions that involved infiltration of social media sites by Russian trolls and technical specialists at the GRU, Russia's Military Intelligence Agency. The reports indicated that the Russians penetrated American Internet platforms. They achieved a strong presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In 2016, millions of Americans had no idea they were looking at information crafted by agents of a foreign power. A year later, in October 2017, Facebook executives acknowledged that the Russians succeeded in reaching 126 million Facebook users. Subsequent reports indicated that Russian agents managed to circulate 131,000 messages to Americans on Twitter and posted more than a thousand videos on Google's YouTube. In April 2020, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed that, quote, Russia sought to shake faith in American democracy, denigrate then candidate Hillary Clinton, and boost her rival, Donald Trump. Again, that's a report confirmed, of course, by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee. Finally, James Comey. Murdoch, Pecker, Cohen, Putin all were motivated to boost Trump's election chances. The fifth man did not intend to tip the scales in Donald Trump's favor, but this individual's inept handling of intelligence nevertheless undermined Hillary Clinton's candidacy. FBI Director James Comey made three extraordinary statements to the American public in 2016, one in July and two in October. Comey's remarks ensured that the confusing and troublesome topic of Hillary Clinton's emails remained front and center during the final days of the election campaign. Ordinarily, FBI directors don't speak to the public about investigations in progress, especially an investigation that is underway concerning a presidential candidate, and the information comes to light to at least the FBI just a short time before the date of an election. But James Comey felt compelled to speak. His first intervention occurred on July 5, 2016. Comey said he would not pursue legal action, but he used harsh words, reprimanding Hillary Clinton for being extremely careless with emails when she was Secretary of State. His unusual public criticism soiled Clinton's image. In October, then, just ten days before the election, James Comey was on television reporting that the FBI's investigation would be reopened because additional emails involving Clinton had been discovered. Then, seven days later, Comey appeared on television again and attempted to put Clinton in the clear, but he had already done considerable damage. Nate Silver, one of the premier vote analysts who worked with the New York Times, concluded that Comey's three surprising announcements may have pushed voters to Trump's camp in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, perhaps also in Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina. Silver estimated that Comey's interventions probably slice four percentage points off Clinton's support. Let's draw some conclusions. First, these details do not alter the outcome of the 2016 election. We're not going to engage in election conspiracy theories in the fashion of Donald Trump, who refused to accept the conclusion that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. But information about the influence of the five men is relevant to interpretations of recent history. These details suggest that Trump was not as broadly popular in November 2016 as many journalists concluded when they discussed his surprising victory. Trump, after all, lost the popular vote in 2016 by nearly 3 million ballots, and it seems likely that he would have lost the popular vote count by millions more, and the Electoral College as well, if the five men identified here had not influenced the nation's political affairs. This examination also reminds us that small matters can tip the scales when the American people are closely divided between two major political parties. That tight division has been strikingly evident in presidential elections of the 21st century. George W. Bush won the 2000 election by taking Florida, and Bush won the 2004 election by winning in Ohio. Both elections were intensely contested and came down to the wire in those two crucial swing states. Of course, Barack Obama won handily in 2008 and did pretty well in 2012 as well. But close calls returned in 2016 and beyond. Trump boasted about a historic gigantic victory over Kamala Harris, but his 1.5% popular vote margin in 2024 made that election one of the tighter ones in modern U.S. history. With many recent presidential victories determined by such a small percentage of the popular vote and the Electoral College count, familiar claims by political analysts about the takeaways from the elections may need refinement. In the 2016 election, for example, many news commentators identified Trump's victory with voter disapproval of the political establishment, anger over disappearance of manufacturing jobs, resistance to immigration, and other issues. Those factors were at play, but they may have been less significant than factors examined here that had been reported by authoritative journalists and news organizations. Perhaps more influential in shaping the 2016 election outcome were treatment of the candidates by Murdoch's Media Empire, concealment of information about payments to two of Trump's alleged paramours, Russia's mischief regarding Hillary Clinton's emails, fake Russian posts on the internet, and FBI Director James Comey's three inappropriate public statements about Hillary Clinton shortly before the presidential election. In America's closely divided presidential elections, actions by just a few individuals can mean a lot.