A wall of post-it notes on Trump's election inside Union Square subway station. Photo courtesy of the author.Barack Obama, like so many others, never saw it coming. Assured by his pollsters that his anointed successor had a lock on the election, he was stunned by the actual result. So in his classy, graceful way, he took on the role of grief counsellor for his shocked and shattered staff as Hillary’s brick wall in the Rust Belt collapsed – barely defended, as it turned out, with her electoral strategy undermined by complacency and a sharper, cheaper, better-organised opposition.
Of course, Clinton won the popularity contest, piling up useless millions in California and New York, whilst neglecting the votes that actually counted, in the Electoral College. Trump, in his thin-skinned, spoilt-brat, brash and bombastic way, took to Twitter (as he does) to claim that only millions of illegal ballots handed Hillary the pointless popular mandate. Unsubstantiated would be the kindest word to describe such an outburst: the New York Times – followed swiftly by other liberal news outlets such as CNN and NBC – termed it “baseless” in its headline. When a former senior reporter mildly protested that such an adjective better fitted the opinion pages than the news pages, the NYT responded by calling the claim a “lie”, in its leader column.
Floundering news media
All through the election campaign, Trump’s favoured modus operandi – outrageous statements, early morning Twitter blasts, gross and insulting behaviour – had left the news media floundering to find the right vocabulary and stance to describe and deal with his candidacy.
