“CLOWN RUNS FOR PREZ” blared the New York Daily News headline on June 17, 2015, after Donald Trump announced he was running for president. For the next 512 days, the Daily News and almost every other legacy media outlet viciously attacked and ridiculed the real estate mogul while predicting over and over that he would never become president.
The old saying is that pain is temporary, but film is forever. So let’s take a look back at the ten worst predictions about Trump’s run to the White House in becoming the 45th and eventually 47th president.
No. 10
“Thank you, Donald Trump, for making my last six weeks my best six weeks,” Jon Stewart snarked on The Daily Show after Trump’s now-infamous trip down the escalator at Trump Tower on June 16 of that year. The implication was that Trump would embarrass himself and that Stewart would have his punchlines easily written for him.
Stewart stepped down as the host of The Daily Show in August 2015 and wasn’t on the air when Trump toppled Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. His former colleague, Stephen Colbert, was, however. As Trump was declared the victor during a Showtime election night special that was supposed to be a celebration of Clinton’s victory, the comedian was visibly shaken.
“How did our politics get so poisonous?” Colbert asked without a hint of self-awareness. Over the next four years, he claimed that Russia hacked the election for Trump.
No. 9
“Can we stipulate for the purposes of this conversation that Donald Trump will never be president of the United States?” well-known plagiarist Mike Barnicle asked on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on June 17, 2015. “We just showed his lethal danger to the Republican Party.”
“Lethal danger to the Republican Party.” Trump led in many polls over the then-prohibitive favorite Jeb Bush less than one month after Barnicle’s comment.
No. 8
“Is Trump running to spite the reporters who mocked him as a bluffer? To use his political fame to trade up for his next wife? Does Trump actually believe he can become president of the United States?” New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait asked in an August 2015 piece subtly titled, “Donald Trump is going to lose because he’s crazy.”
Chait has never been very good on the prediction front. He supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and called 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign “brilliant” before Election Day.
No. 7
“Donald Trump will not be the 45th president of the United States,” James Fallows wrote in July 2015 in the Atlantic. “Nor the 46th, nor any other number you might name. The chance of his winning nomination and election is exactly zero.”
And in one of the least surprising things you’ll read, Fallows worked in President Jimmy Carter’s administration as chief speechwriter before becoming a “journalist.”
No. 6
“I do not hate Donald Trump, but I do not take him seriously. … Everything that was garish and ridiculous about him was fully on display,” John Heileman said in Bloomberg in June 2015. “Will it get him anywhere close to becoming the nominee or the President of the United States? I think not.”
Heileman signed with MSNBC during the Trump presidency to allow himself to become more unhinged, ironically calling Trump “unhinged, manic, unnerving, demented and deranged.”
No. 5
“Trump has a better chance of cameoing in another ‘Home Alone’ movie with Macaulay Culkin — or playing in the NBA Finals — than winning the Republican nomination,” pollster Harry Enten snarked for FiveThirtyEight at the time.
Trump captured the nomination easily before winning the presidency. Enten signed with CNN.
In our fourth spot, no horribly wrong predictions column would be complete without hearing from “conservative” Bill Kristol.
No. 4
Bill Kristol, Aug. 22, 2015: “Prediction: Biden will announce on September 7 after marching with cheering crowds in the annual Wilmington AFL-CIO Labor Day parade.”
Bill Kristol, Twitter, Oct. 5, 2015: “Isn’t the best window for @JoeBiden between the Dem debate (Oct 13) and Hillary’s Benghazi testimony (Oct 22)? I’m saying Biden announces Oct 19.”
Bill Kristol, Twitter, Oct. 16, 2015: “I continue to think Biden will run–and that he can beat Hillary.”
Bill Kristol, Twitter, Oct. 20, 2015: “Biden confirms to Obama at lunch today he’s running, announces at U Delaware tomorrow. You can feel the Joementum!”
Biden never ended up running despite Kristol’s reporting that he would announce on Oct. 21, 2015. And Kristol has been wrong about basically everything ever since.
No. 3
“Donald Trump is not going to be the next president of the United States. This reporter is already on record pledging to eat a bag of rusty nails if the real estate tycoon with the high hair manages to snag the GOP nomination, much less takes down likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton next fall.”
That was the hot take from Ben White of CNBC, who never followed through on his promise to eat a bag of rusty nails after Trump won the nomination and vanquished Clinton.
No. 2
Trump is “a guy who knows he is going to lose. … I don’t know that he’s ever wanted to win. It’s sad. It’s sad and pathetic what’s going on out there.”
Yep. Before MSNBC’s Joe Scarbough insisted that Joe Biden was as sharp as ever in 2024 before his disastrous debate against Trump that June, he was not only predicting that Trump would lose to Clinton but that he wanted to lose despite giving up a nice life to run for president.
Scarborough left the Republican Party after Trump won.
No. 1
“Our emphatic prediction is simply that Trump will not win the nomination,” Nate Silver wrote in FiveThirtyEight on Aug. 11, 2015. “It’s not even clear that he’s trying to do so.”
Here’s the thing about Silver: For whatever reason, and one of life’s great mysteries, Silver’s predictions are treated like gospel by some in the media. Why? Because he got the 2008 election right after Barack Obama defeated John McCain, which was a result that basically anyone sane and sober expected.
Silver’s model for the general election going into Election Day had Clinton’s chances of winning at 71.4%. He also predicted that Harris would defeat Trump in the last election. At what point do we stop listening to this person?
Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since Trump burst onto the political scene. Nothing has been remotely the same since. The clown, per the New York Daily News, is now more popular than he’s ever been — all while the pundits and prognosticators continue to beclown themselves on a daily basis, thanks to Trump Derangement Syndrome that was born in June 2015.