Donald Trump is Elected President of the United States

On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump announced that he was running for president during a speech at Trump Tower. He pledged to implement policies that would boost the economy and says he will get tough on immigration. His statement “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re sending people who have lots of problems,” Trump says. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume, are good people, engendered a storm of controversy. On June 28, 2015, Trump declared he was giving up the TV show “The Apprentice” to run for president.

On June 29, 2015, NBCUniversal declared it was cutting its business ties to Trump and would not air the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because of “derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.” Initially, Donald Trump lost millions of dollars in revenue as he was dumped by NBC, the home of Trump’s beloved Apprentice franchise. Trump’s cologne brands suffered collateral damage. Success by Trump” and “Empire by Trump, sold exclusively by Macy’s was discontinued by the store and its manufacturer. Likewise, Macy’s discontinued Trump’s line of menswear, which it had carried for 11 years. Serta announced it would stop selling its Trump-branded mattress.. From 1996 to 2015, he was an owner of the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss Universe pageants. Univision and NBC in 2015 severed their connection to the pageants over Trump’s remarks at the start of his campaign maligning undocumented immigrants. Trump sued them both in 2016 for breach of contract but ultimately he settled lawsuits against both companies and then sold his pageant interests.

The media, from tabloid to respectable, from left to right, had a field day condemning Trump. The media relentlessly broadcast every remark or action that would portray him in a bad light with the public and the electorate. Yet a strange thing happened. What Donald Trump said found popular support. He was and running for president and the rest is history. He was the ultimate master of the media, a Reality TV President for a Reality TV generation.

In the 1957 movie, “A Face in the Crowd, “ ambitious young radio producer Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) finds a charming rogue named Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith) in an Arkansas drunk tank and puts him on the air. Soon, Rhodes’ local popularity gets him an appearance on television in Memphis, which he parlays into national network stardom that he uses to endorse a presidential candidate for personal gain. But the increasingly petulant star’s ego, arrogance and womanizing threaten his rise to the top. Finally, Marcia Jeffries lets Rhodes speak frankly to her and unbeknownst to him live on the air that brings about his downfall.

In real life, this did not play out in Trump’s case, because the more the media tried to expose him, the more he gained in popularity. Michael R. Burch gave him the nickname of “The Teflon Don.” He knew how to leverage and milk publicity to reach the public. Trump, who an unlimited checkbook, spent half as much money on the media as Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the 2016 presidential election. Instead of becoming another face in the crowd, Trump became president of the United States. On November 8, 2016, to the shock of Trump’s political opponents and to the surprise of his followers, he was elected President of the United States.

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