The Unexpected Triumph of Donald Trump: The 2016 Election

This ultimately led to a massive defeat for Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, when they lost 63 seats in the House of Representatives and six seats in the Senate. After 2010, however, the economy gradually began to recover and the outrage over Wall Street's bailouts also subsided.

Furthermore, in May 2011, President Obama won a major victory for all Americans: Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist group responsible for the September 11 attack, was captured and killed by American forces.

But as the 2012 election approached, there were still questions about President Obama's re-election chances. Experts expected a very close race between him and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney on the Republican side. In the end, however, President Obama exceeded expectations and easily won re-election with 332 electoral votes and 3.9 points in the popular vote. However, the Democrats who did vote didn't do as well, so the GOP retained its majority in the House.

President Obama's second term was marked by foreign policy complications in countries such as Iraq, where the terrorist group ISIS was gaining prominence, and Libya, where longtime dictator Muammar Gaddafi was deposed and executed by local rebel groups supported and armed by American intelligence services became.

Domestically, a new “culture war” began to brew among the American public. Neo-Marxist ideas about the alleged institutional oppression of women and minorities entered the mainstream media and academia. Suddenly, professors and journalists were relentlessly trying to sell the idea that the United States, led by a black president, was actually a “white supremacist patriarchy.” Apparently there was a serious backlash from ordinary people to these absurdities, to which the response of the media, academia and a lot of “woke” activists (this was the time when that term entered the public lexicon) was to do everything to silence the dissenting voices. Calls to fire people because of an opinion or a joke were widespread at the time and, unfortunately, were often heeded by companies and other institutions. Jokes and comedians were particularly in the crosshairs of the woke “Inquisition”.

However, the economy was doing well, with unemployment falling after the horrors of the 2008 crisis; and President Obama remained a charismatic figure with the historic distinction of being the first African-American POTUS. At the start of the 2016 election year, his approval rating was just over 50 percent.

The Democratic nomination wasn't really in question – or at least it shouldn't be. Former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton narrowly lost to Obama in the 2008 primary, and she wasn't willing to go through something like that again. Other than her, no major national figures entered the primaries in 2016. But then an independent and self-proclaimed socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, rose to prominence as state primaries progressed. He was particularly popular with young Democratic Party voters. However, Clinton ultimately defeated him with the not-so-covert help of the DNC and ultimately secured the nomination.

When billionaire real estate developer and reality show star Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination, the media treated him as a fun, novel candidate. He was not expected to actually win the primary race. What most distinguished him from other GOP candidates is that he came out strongly against illegal immigration, which others initially shied away from to avoid offending Latino voters. However, Donald Trump made the call to build a wall on the US-Mexico border the central theme of his election campaign. His simple speaking style also appealed to many people who were fed up with the ridiculously high sensibilities of the new Wake PC culture.

Despite all this, the mainstream media and pollsters gave Donald Trump virtually no chance of winning the election. When a “Hot Mic” clip of him discussing women with radio and television host Billy Bush was released in October, just weeks before the election, his own party turned against him. According to reports, then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus even tried to privately pressure him to drop out of the race.

However, Donald Trump stayed in. Shortly thereafter, the Clinton camp faced a crisis of its own when FBI Director James Comey announced that he was reopening an investigation into Clinton's handling of classified documents during his tenure as secretary of state. The investigation was “miraculously” concluded just days before the election, and no criminal charges were filed against Clinton. So as election night began, the mainstream media was excited again and ready for a big Democratic victory.