MASARYK UNIVERSITY the Main Elements Which Led to Donald

MASARYK UNIVERSITY Faculty of Education Department of English Language and Literature

The Main Elements Which Led to Donald Trump’s Presidential Victory

Master's Thesis

Brno 2018

Supervisor: Written by: Michael George M.A. Bc. Andrea Lábadiová

Prohlášení: Prohlašuji, že jsem diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, a že jsem použila pouze uvedené zdroje. Souhlasím s uložení mé práce na Masarykově univerzitě v Brně v knihovně pedagogické fakulty a s jejím zpřístupněním ke studijním účelům.

Brno, 30. března 2018 Andrea Lábadiová

Declaration: I declare that I have worked on my thesis independently and that I have used only listed sources. I agree with the deposition of my thesis at Masaryk University, Brno, at the library of Faculty of Education and with making it accessible for study purposes.

Brno, 30th March 2018 Andrea Lábadiová

Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor Mr. Michael George for his kind, patient and valuable advice and the guidance that he provided during my work on the thesis.

Abstract This master’s thesis attempts to explain the main elements in Donald Trump becoming the 45th president of the United States and their significance in the process. The thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part focuses on Donald Trump’s campaign, mainly on his controversial anti-establishment rhetoric with appeals to anger and fear of his audience. It also deals with the rise of desire for stronger leadership among the American people. The second part deals with Donald Trump’s voters, mainly their educational levels as well as their views on the nature of the American identity, and also opioid problems arising in the US and the correlation with Trump’s success. This part also includes views of women and Hispanic voters and their reasons to vote for Donald Trump. The third part focuses on the role of media, particularly on the FakeNews phenomena, as well as the war between Donald Trump and the mainstream media. This part also analyses the influence of social networks during, particularly Facebook and Twitter and the outcome of the election.

Keywords 2016 US presidential election, Donald Trump, Populism, Identity, Education, Fake News, Media, Social networks

Anotace Tato diplomová práce se pokouší vysvětlit hlavní elementy ve zvolení Donalda Trumpa 45. prezidentem Spojených států a jejich důležitosti v tomto procesu. Práce je rozdělena na tři hlavní části. První část se zaměřuje na kampaň Donalda Trumpa, zejména na jeho kontroverzní rétorikou proti politickému establishmentu a jeho působením na vztek a strach svého publika. Tato část se také zabývá nárustem potřeby “pevnější ruky” v Ame- rice. Druhá část se zabývá voliči Donalda Trumpa, zejména úrovní jejich vzdělání a také jejich obrazem Americké identity. Také se zabývá nárustem problémů zneužívání omam- ných látek a korelace s úspěchem Donalda Trumpa. Třetí část se zaměřuje na roli médií, zejména na problematiku falešných zpráv. Také se zabývá válkou mezi Donaldem Trum- pem a mainstreamovými médii a vlivem sociálních sítí během prezidentské kampaně a vlivu na výsledek voleb.

Klíčová slova Prezidentské volby v Americe 2016, Donald Trump, Populismus, Identita, Vzdělání, Fa- lešné zprávy, Média, Sociální sítě

Table of contents 1. Introduction ...... 6 1.1. Electoral College ...... 7 2. Campaign strategy ...... 9 2.1. Make America Great Again ...... 9 2.1.1. Populism and anti-elitism ...... 10 2.2. Use of fear ...... 18 2.2.1. Xenophobia, racism ...... 19 2.2.2. Desire for stronger leadership ...... 21 3. Donald Trump’s Voters ...... 25 3.1. Education levels ...... 25 3.1.1. Low-information voters vs. college-educated voters ...... 25 3.2. Views on the American identity and the future ...... 30 3.2.1. Opioid problems ...... 32 3.2.2. America first...... 33 3.3. Willful ignorance ...... 35 3.3.1. Women voters ...... 35 3.3.2. Latino voters...... 41 4. The Role of Media ...... 46 4.1. Donald Trump’s transformation of the news ...... 46 4.1.1. Fake news phenomenon ...... 47 4.1.2. War with the media ...... 52 4.1.3. Social media - Twitter, Facebook ...... 56 5. Conclusion ...... 62 Appendix ...... 64 List of figures ...... 65 Works cited ...... 82

1. Introduction This master’s thesis. “The Main Elements Which Led To Donald Trump’s Presidential Victory”, aims to introduce and study the main factors which were significant in Repub- lican candidate Donald Trump’s triumph in the presidential election of 2016. It will at- tempt to provide answers as to how businessman and entrepreneur Donald Trump, who was considered an outsider of the presidential race, paved his way into the White House.

The 2016 US presidential election was by all means controversial and it deserves attention. The campaigns of the two candidates targeted quite different voter groups and the fact that the race was won by Donald Trump is a reflection of American society and underlying issues, be it views on immigration, gun ownership or the very core of American identity in light of increasing cultural diversity.

The result of the election suggests that there is a rising desire for stronger leadership among American society as the tough language of Donald Trump resonated with many, surprisingly even with women and Hispanic voters, who were often target of Donald Trump’s harsh rhetoric. In addition, Trump’s supporters showed zero tolerance for politically correct speech in politicians of the establishment and welcomed Donald Trump’s controversial style of speaking.

This election was also significantly different from the previous ones in the use of social media, especially by Donald Trump, as a form of direct communication with the audience outside the campaign rallies. His campaign was characterized by hostility towards the mainstream media, which also resonated with quite a wide number of voters and ulti- mately gave rise to the so called “alternative news”, also known as FakeNews, frequently by Donald Trump personally.

Social platforms structure, such as the one of Facebook, is very different from traditional media as it allows content sharing among the users with almost no fact-checking or editorial judgement. The people who spread false news are able to reach as many readers as the New York Times and other media outlets. (Allcot and Gentzkow, Social Media and Fake News)

A great number of the false news included anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda in order to harm her electability, which was in contrast with Donald Trump’s overly positive coverage, found especially in Russian propaganda outlets based in the US - Sputnik News or Russia Today.

Many of the elements reach beyond the US 2016 presidential election and Donald Trump. This thesis aims to study the elements deeper to determine the processes which lead to Donald Trump’s presidential triumph.

1.1. Electoral College In order to understand the process of presidential elections in the United States it is essential to explain what the Electoral College is and how it works.

The Electoral College is a process established by the founding fathers in the Constitution representing a compromise between electing the US president by a Congressional vote and by the vote of American citizens who qualify as legitimate voters. (About, National Archives)

First there is a selection of the electors and this process consists of two parts. At first the political parties in each state choose slates of potential electors before the General Elec- tions and in the second part which takes place on the Election day when the voters in all states choose the electors of that particular state in casting the votes for the President. The winning slate of electors are appointed as the electors of particular state, and most states have “winner-take all” with the exception of Nebraska and Maine where electors are pro- portionally distributed. (Electors, National Archives)

The Electoral College consists of 538 Electors and a majority of 270 votes is required to elect the President. (About, National Archives) The distribution of the electoral votes is based on the Census with the number of votes allocated in every state which equal to the number of Senators and members of the House of Representatives combined. (Allocation, National Archives)

In the 2016 balloting Donald Trump won 304 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 227. The tally of the Pew Research Center shows that Electoral College votes sometimes differ from the popular votes, because in this case the winner of the popular vote was Hillary Clinton with 2.9 million more votes than Donald Trump. As it was mentioned earlier, the US election system is “winner-take-all” so Mr. Trump won because he won in several larger states, such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and thus winning all the electoral votes in those states. Therefore, the very nature of the election system of the United states creates a possibility for mismatch between the electoral and popular vote and that is why Donald Trump has won the election even when he lost the popular vote. (DeSilver, Electoral wins are bigger)

2. Campaign strategy This chapter studies Donald Trump’s presidential campaign which was one of the elements which led to his presidential victory. The core of the campaign strategy was the motto “Make America Great Again” promising several changes of the established US system. Donald Trump’s campaign aimed at people’s fears and insecurities regarding the system and he adapted his rhetoric to deepen the inner fears of the voters. The appeal to people’s fears has led to desire for stronger authoritarian leadership among the people, most significantly seen in the Republican supporters.

2.1. Make America Great Again Donald Trump was generally considered an outsider in the 2016 presidential race and even the first exit polls were indicating that Hillary Clinton would be the next US president. In the primary race only 26% of the registered voters considered Trump an eligible candidate who would make a good president. (Fingerhut, Perception of the presidential candidates)

As for the motto “Make America Great Again” or simply “MAGA”, the idea of this slogan occurred to Trump back in 2012 after Mitt Romney lost the election to Barrack Obama. “I felt that jobs were hurting. I looked at the many types of illness our country had, and whether it's at the border, whether it's security, whether it's law and order or lack of law and order. Then, of course, you get to trade, and I said to myself, 'What would be good?' I was sitting at my desk, where I am right now, and I said, 'Make America Great Again” (Engel, Trump slogan)

He also had it trademarked right away, even though these words were used quite promi- nently by Ronald Reagan in his campaign, but Trump claims that he was not aware of this until a year ago. (Engel)

Donald Trump was close to running for president in 1988, but according to his longterm political advisor Roger Stone, Trump was not seriously attracted to the presidency at that

time as he was more attracted by the attention and publicity he was receiving. He, however, tried to pursue strong policies even at that time. “I want extreme competence. I want strength and extreme competence.” (President Trump, PBS, 26:20 - 27:18)

Trump was already speaking very directly and he was also blaming NATO for bad economy and unfair trade deals. “He is already formulating his views, as early as eighty eight.” (President Trump, PBS, 27:30-28:02)

Donald Trump’s campaign and goals for the country are featured at www.greatagain.gov which is now transferred to the official website of the White House. Trump promised to focus on serving America and the motto therefore signaled a need of transition for the country. The transition should bring jobs back to the American people by renegotiating trade deals and a tax code, it should also focus on securing the borders, law restoration, repealing and replacing Obamacare, better care for the military and for US veterans and most importantly it should unify the Americans. (Issues, the White House)

2.1.1. Populism and anti-elitism During his campaign Donald Trump used populism as a tool to impress his voters and therefore it is important to define the term. The Cambridge Dictionary defines populism as follows: “political ideas and activities that are intended to get the support of ordinary people by giving them what they want.” (Populism, Cambridge Dictionary)

Populism used in Mr. Trump’s campaign was closely interlaced with sense of anti-elitism as one of his main appeals was to distinguish himself from the classic political figures of the establishment as much as possible. Anti-elitism is the opposite of elitism, which can be defined as “a belief that society should be governed by a select group of gifted and highly educated individuals”. (Elitism, Collins Dictionary) Therefore anti-elitism is perceived as opposing the practices of elitism. (Anti-elitist, Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Donald Trump and his campaign advisers decided the message of Mr. Trump’s campaign should emphasize “common sense”. He simplified complex global issues so that the potential voters would feel as if the issues can also be fixed simply and quickly and therefore Donald Trump had the ideas and means to fix them. Sam Nunberg, one of Mr. Trump’s campaign advisors, was certain that a Republican primary voter would be attracted by the

idea that Donald Trump would not behave the way that “the elite class” does, meaning that the elites tell people what they can or cannot do because they are smarter. The infur- iated potential Republican voter would be more prone to vote for Donald Trump, who used populistic anger aimed at the political establishment in the core features of his campaign. The idea of “the wall” did not apply solely on the issues of immigration, but it was also meant as a metaphor to set himself apart from the political elites. (Diamond, J. - CNN’s Unprecedented: Common sense)

PBS Frontline has released a documentary on Donald Trump’s journey to the presidential victory. In this documentary Donald Trump's former political advisor Roger Stone said that people voted for Mr. Trump as he is and they want him to be like this. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 5:44)

Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s campaign manager, said that he had prepared a speech for Mr. Trump’s announcement of presidential candidacy and that speech should have lasted about seven minutes, but Donald Trump spoke for more than forty minutes not using the remarks that the manager had prepared for him. (Trump’s Road, PBS,7:18- 7:45)

Donald Trump made his announcement speech quite special and very much different from what the public is used to in political speeches. Trump began with thanking the people gathered in the Trump Tower emphasizing that the amount of people is unexpectedly large. He continued by addressing economic issues of the United States while highlight- ing that he is much more successful in trade deals than the established government. Mr. Trump also addressed threats such as Islamic terrorism and immigrants coming from Mexico and Arabic countries as well as nuclear threats or employment issues. He also denounced Obamacare and continued by emphasizing that the politicians of the establishment would not keep their promises made to the American people. Donald Trump also promised renegotiating the trade deals in order to improve the current economic situation by claiming that he knew the best and smartest negotiators. (Time Staff, Trump Presiden- tial Announcement Speech)

Dan Balz, a reporter for Washington Post, said that the campaign was mainly lead by Donald Trump’s instincts. Donald Trump’s children were chosen to be his key advisors,

as well as Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and thus the campaign’s base was a “family business”. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 9:00) The whole team decided that the ultimate rule of the campaign would be to “let Trump be Trump” (Trump’s Road, PBS, 9.23) In the “Time” article containing the transcript of Donald Trump’s announcement speech Trump continued with his non-politically correct talks by criticizing the government by using quite controversial rhetoric. “How stupid are our leaders? How stupid are these politicians to allow this to happen? How stupid are they?” (Time Staff, Trump’s An- nouncement Speech)

Donald Trump’s controversial remarks were a part of his campaign rhetoric which was deliberate protest against the political correctness and this involved for example a remark about John McCain not being a war hero “because he was captured”. A Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who was hosting the interview, was shocked by Mr. Trump’s remark and thought that this would eradicate Donald Trump’s electability. Mr. Lewandowski then advised Mr. Trump to give a public apology to Mr. McCain, but Donald Trump had refused saying that Mr. Lewandowski did not understand the American people. Donald Trump understood that his defiance of political correctness would attract the target voters. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 9:44-10.43)

His confidence, along with his unconventional rhetoric, was one of the elements by which he distinguished himself among the other Republican presidential candidates. In the first Republican debate he faced his controversial past as a person from show business and he was questioned about his often offensive remarks. Donald Trump did not deny these claims nor did he express remorse, in fact he even implied that he had done nothing wrong. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 11:22-12:22) The author of “TrumpNation” Timothy O’Brien denoted his behavior as “both repellent and authentic all at once” (Trump’s Road, PBS, 12:40).

Mark Fisher, a co-author of “Trump Revealed”, said that Donald Trump is deliberately not politically correct and his statements are often “decisive and tough” and most politicians and elites would not dare to use such audacious words. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 14.34- 14.55)

Jennifer Scalfani who is a linguist at Georgetown University have been studying Donald Trump speaking style for two years and refers to Mr. Trump as being a unique politician because his speeches were unlike speeches of any other politicians. “He speaks like eve- rybody else.”(0:22) There is also a simplicity in Trump’s language that many people fa- miliarized themselves with. “We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning” (1:09). Donald Trump also often uses hyperboles - both in positive and negative sense - and his speeches were frequently accompanied by hyperbolic hand gestures, which is unlikely to be seen in usual political speeches. (3:20-3.46) Mrs. Scalfani sums up her analysis by claiming that language can be used to create a certain “brand” or “identity” for a clear distinction from the others and what attracts the desired attention. (Washington Post, Linguist’s study of Trump’s speeches)

Another element significant in Donald Trump’s campaign were the rallies where he was in direct contact with his audience and potential voters. He used his experience of being a publicly known person from show business so he knew how to appeal to the people. Mr. Trump’s campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio described the atmosphere of the rallies as if “they fed off of each other”. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 16.31)

Marc Fisher and Michael Kranish are the authors of a book called “Trump Revealed” which is an investigative biography based on interviews with Donald Trump. As for the rallies Trump claimed during these interviews that he would do anything possible to “keep the red light on”, meaning he would do no matter what to attract the attention of the cameras, especially the ones with the red light on, meaning that he was broadcast live. (Politics Prose, “Trump Revealed”, 12.38 - 12:56)

During these rallies Mr. Trump continued with his controversial rhetoric in order to allure the audience and to convince them that he really is different from the elites and he was aiming at people’s anger and dissatisfaction with the political establishment. (Trump’s Road, PBS,18.20-18:50)

Donald Trump’s supporters felt safe to express their emotions at these rallies and they often used harsh language. He assured them that the rallies are the safest place for them to express themselves. “The safest place in the world to be is at a Trump rally.” (0:18- 0:23) As it was previously mentioned the people leaving these rallies often feel energized

and so their emotions and anger last even after the events. (The NewYork Times, Unfil- tered Voices)

Frank Luntz claimed the following: “There is so much that scares Americans and Donald Trump is the only politician who talked to those concerns and those fears.” (Trump’s Road, PBS, 19.01-19.12)

A cognitive study focusing on Donald Trump’s base of so called “low information voters” who were attracted by Mr. Trump for being a meddler in politics and a person who would reshuffle the established political system and address people’s anxieties post Great Re- cession, including various “threats to their personal, collective and socio-economic security”. (Fording and Schram, Low-Information Voters, 4)

Donald Trump knew what his voters wanted to hear and he was also aware that many people are fed up with being politically correct. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 19:40 -19:51).

The established politicians realized that Donald Trump, who was generally considered an outsider, was to be taken seriously. Mark Leibovich, The New York Times Magazine reporter, said that the establishment tried to get rid of Trump as they considered him a credible threat to the Republican Party and also to the whole nation were he to become the president since he “did not play by their rules”. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 20:08-20:25)

One of the members of the establishment who tried to discredit Trump’s electability was the former American president Barrack Obama, who openly claimed that he did not believe that Mr. Trump could become the next US president. “I continue to believe that Mr. Trump will not be president. And the reason is that I have a lot of faith in the American people and that they recognize that being a president is a serious job.” (Obama: Donald Trump will not be president, 0.00-0.16)

The Republican Party thus started to take action in order to prevent Donald Trump from winning the election. “This man is a pathological liar.” was one of the claims by Ted Cruz, other Republican presidential candidate, who was one of the members of the establishment who wanted to discredit Donald Trump’s electability. He went on by ridiculing Trump’s claim that Cruz’s father had helped with J.F. Kennedy assassination and he also

stated that Donald Trump was a “narcissist” who constantly called his opponents liars. (Wright and Kopan, Cruz: Trump is “a pathological liar”)

Donald Trump used these allegations to retaliate during the Republican debates. Robert Costa said that Donald Trump’s remarks were callous due to the fact that Trump “owed nothing to the Republican Party” as they all strongly opposed him. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 21:20-22:15)

The atmosphere during the rallies was gradually escalating in violence as Donald Trump’s rhetoric toughened and involved quite graphic language. Alec MacGillis, a reporter from ProPublica, described non-white Donald Trump protesters being assaulted by his supporters while he was encouraging them in doing so. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 24:14-24.39)

Mr. Trump encouraged the people at the rallies. “Hey, there is a group out there. Just throw them the hell out.” (The New York Times, Unfiltered voices, 1:23)

Donald Trump succeeded in winning the nomination of the divided Republican Party and was about to pursue the same strategy in winning the presidency of a divided country. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 25:41-26:21)

Marc Fisher claimed that the message that Mr. Trump was there to protect them against the establishment politicians and media that have been victimizing the working class people. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 26:38-27:02)

In an interview for NPR which was hosted by Steve Inskeep who talked to Scott Detrow and J.D. Vance. Mr. Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis”, stated that it was a surprise for him when Donald Trump became the president, but it was not an utter surprise for him as he interviewed a great number of people from Kentucky and Ohio, who were among the representatives of the American middle class and in these talks he encountered great deal of frustration and alienation towards the political elites and their lack of actions to improve the life of the people living in middle America. He also described Donald Trump’s speeches as being “spectacularly dark” when he spoke about the current state of the United States and that it made even

more sense for people from small towns of America, who did not have many jobs. (Inskeep, Examining Trump’s Appeal)

“Nobody knows the system better than me. Which is why I alone can fix it.” (PBS, 27:30) Donald Trump knew how to appeal on the emotions and particularly on anger and insecurities of his audience and he also knew how to impress them and give them the idea that he is different, because he cares about people that the other politicians do not and that him in particular is the person to vote for in order to change their situation for the better.

When Donald Trump hired Steve Bannon, the chairman of the right-wing website Breit- bart News, as his new campaign advisor, it was another act to fortify his anti-elite and anti-establishment strategy. Dan Balz said that Steve Bannon’s ultimate goal was to destroy the political establishment and the Republican Party “as we know it” and that he was “a disruptor in almost every way”. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 32:03-32:20)

Mr. Bannon himself claimed the following: “We think of ourselves as virulently anti- establishment, particularly 'anti-' the permanent political class.” (BBC News, Steve Ban- non: key adviser)

Another of the elements which distinguished Donald Trump from the classic politicians of the establishment was that he preferred improvisation to study and preparation. Mr. Trump made this clear during the first presidential debate when he taunted his Democratic Party opponent Hillary Clinton for spending too much time on preparation. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 33:06-33:55)

When Hillary Clinton criticized Donald Trump for withholding his tax returns, he would retaliate by criticizing her for the emails that she had deleted and that moment sparked one of the deepest conflicts between these two candidates. (CBS: The first presidential debate, 27:50-36:00)

Authors of cognitive study of Trump’s supporters argued that people who criticized Don- ald Trump or his supporters for being misinformed or uninformed, racist or xenophobic, they were at risk of being considered the exact elites that Mr. Trump have been describing them - arrogant and ignorant of middle class citizens. That was exactly the case of Hillary

Clinton where she gave a speech at New York City LGBQT gala as she referred to half of Donald Trump’s supporters as “deplorables”. (Fording and Schram 5)

Right before the second debate, which was after the release of a decade old compromising recording of Donald Trump confessing to groping women and his revenge by bringing women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual abuse to a press conference arranged by Steve Bannon. Hillary Clinton allegedly threatened them to stay silent. Donald Trump came to the debate confident and prepared to diminish Mrs. Clinton’s electability by focusing his speech on the leaked emails which Mrs. Clinton had deleted before and also by pointing out that she would be the continuation of Barack Obama rule and he is generally considered a member of the establishment as well. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 39:02-41:50)

This event was held less than two hours before Mr. Trump’s appearance at the second presidential debate and there were three women present who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct and one of the women said that Mr. Clinton were represented by Hil- lary Clinton during the trial, who was an attorney back in 1975. Mr. Trump ignored the questions asked by the reporters concerning his 2005 claims that as a celebrity he could get away with sexual assaults on women. (Miller, Donald Trump Meets With Bill Clinton Accusers)

During the debate Donald Trump used language which was identifiable for the people as it was very informal and tough, thus it was another example of not being politically correct and prepared unlike the establishment politicians of which Hillary Clinton was a representative. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 43.09-43.57)

The Atlantic magazine published an interview by Ioni Appelbaum, who interviewed Jerry Cave, a longtime media executive who wrote an essay on Donald Trump’s success in the Republican primaries. Mr. Cave addressed the moments he realized Donald Trump could become the next president and it was the first speech on illegal immigration and this matter will be dealt with later in this chapter. But the speech given by Mr. Trump was, according to Mr. Cave, not about illegal immigration at all. Donald Trump speech focused on the “blue-collar jobs that had been outsourced to manufacturers” to which the politicians and elites did not pay much attention in their speeches nor in their deeds. Mr. Trump also spoke about the trade deals which had destroyed jobs in America and the important

aspect of the speech was the message that Donald Trump was sending, posing the elites, both Republican and Democratic, into the role of the real enemy of the people. (Appel- baum, Marketing Strategies Behind Trump's Success)

Donald Trump used also his established and worldwide famous brand as an evidence that he is capable and that he indeed is a goal-oriented person who would use all the means possible to achieve what he set his mind to and thus the people associate him with power. While Hillary Clinton was using the Clinton brand as well, it was not as appealing as in the case of Mr. Trump and was more associated with politics and not with entertainment. Donald Trump’s rhetoric was communicating strong message and aiming at the sources of dissatisfaction among the voters. The “MAGA” slogan resonated with people who shared similar perceptions of the world and concerns about unsatisfactory opportunities in employment. “Trump had a very direct and consistent message and paired it with change”. (Rivero, How Marketing Helped Donald Trump)

2.2. Use of fear Donald Trump’s appeal to people’s fears was one of the elements which helped him suc- ceed in the presidential race. Attributes of fear were a considerable part of his campaign rhetoric as he focused on various domestic and foreign threats, were it terrorist attacks, mass migration, lack of jobs and overall rise of crime and mass shootings, leading to general instability and division among the American public.

People were scared and Donald Trump used their fears and insecurities and proliferated them. He combined fear and anger which became his main campaign strategy and a unique political force. Mr. Trump’s speech on immigration from August 2016 focused on outsiders posing a threat to the nation. “Countless innocent American lives have been stolen because our politicians have failed in their duty to secure our borders”. (Ball, Pol- itics of Fear)

The following subchapter studies deeper the role of xenophobia and racism as a part of Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric.

2.2.1. Xenophobia, racism The term of xenophobia is defined as “fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign” by Merriam-Webster dictionary. (Xenophobia, Mer- riam-Webster Dictionary) As foreign in this sense were perceived the people from Mex- ico and the ones from Arabic countries whose religion was Islam and who were the targets of Donald Trump’s hate speeches.

The definition of racism can be the following: “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.” (Racism, Oxford Dictionaries) Donald Trump’s supporters were also driven by their anger against non-white citizens and their fear of them stealing the jobs or rising crime in the United States.

The following are the examples of Mr. Trump’s speech on immigration from August 2016, focusing on pointing the anger and fear at Mexican and Muslim immigrants. “We will build a great wall along the southern border and Mexico will pay for the wall.” (Business Insider, Immigration speech highlights, 0:08)

“We are going to suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening cannot occur. Countries from which immigration will be suspended would include places like Syria and Lybia.”(Business Insider, Immigration speech highlights, 1:00-1:28)

Donald Trump’s summoned fear by describing the threats both in concrete and abstract terms. The reason that he was successful with these remarks was because the fear among the society was pervading and therefore the need for protection grew stronger among the people. The fact that the other politicians seemed to deliberately play down on these threats made the people more susceptible to support Trump. He used concrete examples, as the attacks in Paris or San Bernardino, as proof that the fear was valid and directed that fear and anger towards the Muslims. Mr. Trump spoked directly to the people’s anger and promised protection and strength, posing himself to be the only solution. “You know what, darling? You are not going to be scared anymore. They are going to be scared.” (Ball) A study published called “Race, Religion and Immigration 2016” studied the presidential campaigns of 2016 and also stated that many voters left the Democratic Party at the early

stage of Obama’s rule and it was mostly white people without college education situated in the Southern part of America. Thus the 2016 campaign’s underlying matter was identity and attitudes towards race, ethnicity and religion and created significant cleavage among the voters. Donald Trump used features of anger and fear pointed at Mexicans and Muslims when he was announcing his candidacy. He also emphasized the importance of keeping people who could pose a threat to the nation out of the country. In contrast with his campaign Hillary Clinton message was not as tough as her campaign’s motto “Stron- ger Together” suggested that differences among Americans were to be embraced and not feared and she welcomed the groups that Trump labelled as potentially risky. (Sides, Race, Religion and Immigration)

Donald Trump’s campaign appeared as tough and firm and resonated with many people. His rhetoric was, apart from the anti-establishment remarks, based also on demonization of so called “out groups”, appealing to fears of the public regarding the immigrants coming from Mexico and other parts of Central and South America as well as refugees from war torn Arabic countries. These out groups also involved non-white citizens as well as women whose numbers had started to rise up in the workforce and also in politics. His strategy featured so called “dog whistling” which can be defined as “a coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others ”.(merriam-webster.com/dog whistle political meaning) Donald Trump used this coded language in his speeches in order to mask his xenophobic, racist and also sexist appeals. He also openly boasted about his scarcity of experience in politics. (Fording and Schram 4)

An article published by the Pew Research Centre investigating American people’s views on immigration, diversity and social issues showed that Republican voters and especially Trump’s supporters had said that they considered immigrants to be a burden to the country as well as that they would support building a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico. Their views on Muslims living in America were of conservative nature as well because they claimed that the American Muslims should be subjected to another round of security scrutiny. (Fingerhut, Views on immigration, diversity, social issues)

Donald Trump had successfully palpated into the fears of “the other” among the Ameri- can people. His remarks about the then-president Barrack Obama not being “true Amer- ican” and about Muslims who wanted to destroy the United States were on point for the middle class workers with lower levels of education (this matter will be dealt with deeper in the following chapter). Donald Trump used the citizens’ fear and anger and targeted it to Mexicans and Muslims, blaming them for the current state of America and posing ad- ditional threat in the form of Islamic terrorism. Examples of voters driven by the anger and fear could be seen inside the campaign rallies where Donald Trump created a safe non-politically correct environment where the supporters could express their often violent feeling often featuring xenophobia. Donald Trump ensured his audience that their feelings are legitimate and encouraged them to express themselves. (Minton, Appeal of Don- ald Trump)

2.2.2. Desire for stronger leadership As it was already mentioned the elements of fear was one of the most significant features of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. According to the psychologists fear of minor- ities seem to be directly connected with the desire for a strong leadership. (Taub, Ameri- can authoritarianism)

Authoritarianism can be defined as “the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.” (Authoritarianism, Oxford Dictionaries)

Doctor Karen Stenner, a political scientist and the author of “The Authoritarian Dy- namic”, claimed in her book that there could be seen a certain subset of people who tend to possess authoritarian tendencies. Such tendencies are often triggered according to the perception of physical threats and social changes. These people are therefore triggered to desire policies and leaders who could be considered authoritarian. Such activation could come from the people’s fears and feelings of threats posed by the changing society and its developing diversity. (Taub,)

Jonathan Haidt, a professor from the New York University, has described these tendencies as a sort of button that is pushed. “In case of moral threat, lock down the borders, kick out those who are different, and punish those who are morally deviant.” (Taub)

Such elements were visible during Donald Trump’s campaign when he pointed the voter’s fears, anger and frustration towards Mexicans and Muslims and vowed to take extraordi- nary measures in order to solve their problems by promising to build a wall and establish tougher immigration policy. (Taub)

Matthew McWilliams fielded a survey of over three hundred potential voters to gather information on how the people would vote and he realized that authoritarianism was one of the trends that had been generally overlooked. The authoritarianism was to be looked on as a worldview rather than typical dictatorships. According to his study the people who scored high on the authoritarian scale had held high values of protection of social norms and in case of threats they would support aggressive policies and authoritarian leaders. The reason that Donald Trump won in South Carolina was because of the ada- mant support among the authoritarian voters. Mr. Williams also conducted a national poll by which he measured the authoritarian attitudes in American people. This poll showed that solely authoritarian tendencies and fears of terrorism was linked to potential support for Trump. People with authoritarian attitudes fear “the others” and are willing to follow strong authoritarian leaders and therefore were more prone to identify with Donald Trump’s strongman’s rhetoric. (MacWilliams, Trump support)

America’s social changes due to the increasing cultural diversity have been happening for a longer period of time, but recently these changes have become more significant. This time period of changes in the American society also brought economic trends which have troubled the white middle class workers in which the authoritarian tendencies could be found most often. These tendencies which have arisen in American politics reach beyond Donald Trump as there are significant elements of polarization and shifts to the right wing within the GOP. The appeal of Donald Trump as a strong leader combined demographic, economic and political elements. (Taub)

As for the “activation” that Karen Stenner wrote about, Marc Hetherington, a professor from Vanderbilt University, argued that the people with authoritarian tendencies were not “activated” as they have always had such preferences. Such people expressed their authoritarian preferences when the society began changing or when they sensed a threat posed by outsiders. (Taub)

Donald Trump’s language during his campaign could undoubtedly be described as tough and strong. The phrase in which he claimed that he was the only one who could fix the American system was according to Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker reporter, one of the examples of rhetoric used by autocrats. (Trump’s Road, PBS) 27:36)

Uri Friedman, a reporter for the Atlantic magazine, published a video article on Youtube in which said that Donald Trump was a “populist authoritarian”. He cited political scientists Pippa Norris and Ronald Ingleheart who argued that such a type of politician pos- sesses the qualities of both populist and authoritarian. They labeled Trump as populist because of his claims of being a representative of the ordinary people, an outsider to the establishment, for using the rallies as a form of direct communication with the audience and for his interpretation of the election results as achieving an absolute power. The reason why they considered him to have authoritarian tendencies is because he promised tough security measures against people of the out-groups, he promoted nationalism, he did not approve of multiculturalism and wanted to concentrate all the power in one strong leader - himself. The thing that distinguished him from the proper authoritarian is that he did not pursue any typical anti-democratic measures, such as abolishing the free press or trying to create a state that would be lead only by single party. However, his rhetoric often featured authoritarian-like language. (Friedman, Is Trump a Populist Authoritarian)

A cognitive study conducted by psychologists Becky Choma and Yaniv Hanoch who developed the findings by Mrs. Taub and Mr. MacWilliams about the links between authoritarianism and support for Donald Trump to understand the success of Donald Trump in the primaries. A poll conducted by political scientists Wendy Rahn and Eric Oliver was based on the responses of 1044 respondents which has also shown that the people who supported Trump held authoritarian views and they scored higher on the authoritarianism scale compared to the voters of Clinton. Donald Trump’s authoritarian style of speaking and his abilities to deliver strong and unconventional statements were one of the elements that attracted many GOP delegates. However, there was also a notable opposition towards Trump among the conservatives from the Republican Party, which has caused shifts to vote for Hillary Clinton as she was considered the only option for them. The study also confirmed that the endorsement of the right-wing authoritarian part of the

public, a type which particularly requires obedience and respect of authorities and pun- ishing those who lack such qualities, would later have the desire to vote for Donald Trump. (Choma, Cognitive ability and authoritarianism)

The history of Donald Trump’s tough language dates back into the beginnings of his real estate career in Manhattan. He chose Roy Cohn, an infamous attorney known for his toughness and ruthlessness during “the McCarthy hearings”. Mr. Cohn taught Donald Trump to be “confrontational”, according to Trump’s friend Nikki Haskel.(President Trump, PBS, 15:55-17.20)

Donald Trump and his father Fred Trump hired Mr. Cohn as their attorney when their apartment building company was charged with racial discrimination against black tenants by the Federal Government in 1973. Cahn’s told Trump that he should “never settle” and that he should “fight back harder than they ever hit you”. (President Trump, PBS 17:57) They decided to retaliate by filing a 100 million lawsuit against, but they had to settle eventually because of evidence of racial discrimination. Despite the decisive loss, Donald Trump proclaimed his victory and never uttered any admission of guilt regarding this case. (President Trump, PBS 18.00-18:50)

According to Tony Schwartz, a co-author of “The Art of the Deal”, stated that this behavior is very common for Donald Trump as he often retaliates harshly at anyone who would claim that Trump had done something wrong or horrible. “If you lose, declare victory.” (President Trump, PBS, 19.00 - 19:22)

3. Donald Trump’s Voters The following chapter offers an analysis Donald Trump’s supporters in terms of the levels of their education, but also of the fact the Trump’s base of followers was not homogenous in regard to their views or demographics. This chapter also focuses on the groups of supporters who were often targets of Trump’s offensive remarks, women and Hispanics in particular.

3.1. Educational levels Education played very important role in the 2016 election. In the light of studies and surveys significant divisions and shifts among the voters were visible in regard to the levels of their formal education.

3.1.1. Low information voters vs. college-educated voters An evidence for claims that the majority of the base of Donald Trump supporters was not highly educated could be seen in the cognitive study by Mr. Fording and Mr. Sanford who referred to this part of the supporters as “low-information voters”. (Fording and Schram 3)

These voters were described as lacking information about politics and they were also prone to respond to Donald Trump’s rhetoric involving misstatements and untruths with the appeals to their inner fears and anxieties. They were also more prone to vote for him as they could identify with his self-proclaimed lack of facts about politics and thus they saw him as someone very different from the politicians but very similar to themselves. A part of people who formerly supported Hillary Clinton were drawn away to Donald Trump by his appeals to their fears. A portion of data analyzed in this study, which was based on the “American National Election Study Pilot Survey” from January 2016, confirmed that significant part of Trump’s base of followers disproportionately involved white low-information voters who were prone to be attracted by Donald Trump’s rhetoric as they lacked the crucial information and were thus relying strongly on their negative emotions towards Muslims, immigrants and non-whites. However, they were not driven by their economical anxieties. (Fording and Schram 6-7)

Psychological factors were of high importance in the support of the less educated groups in their support for populist leaders as they were seen as defending the traditional cultural values, dominating nationalistic and xenophobic appeals, demonising the people from the “out-groups” as well as maintaining outmoded gender roles. Such people tend to be fed up with the mainstream parties led by highly educated elites with moral views too pro- gressive for the low-educated to embrace. Among the other Republican candidates Trump was the one to attract the less educated people as the supporters whose education was higher tended to vote for other candidates. (Fording and Schram 9-10)

The term “low-information voters” was coined by Samuel Popkin who understood that this term of social science was very important to understand the part of the voters with limited information which did not prevent them from thinking that they were able to vote reasonably. (Fording and Schram 11)

In the he study published on votersstudygroup.org called “Race, Religion and Immigra- tion” the matter of significant divisions in the education levels of the voters is referred to as the “diploma divide” (Sides)

The diploma divide term was based on a study “Democratic Advantage in Partisanship, by Race and Education, 1992-2016)1 This graph showed that the white people fled the Democratic Party and they were decisively white people who without college education and such people were quite evenly split between the Democratic and the Republican Party from 1992 to 2008. But by 2015, the number of the less educated white people, who were high school-educated or even less rose by 24 percent in the Republican Party. In contrast the white people with college education fled to the Democratic Party. (Sides)

Education was perhaps the most significant factor in the 2016 election. In the article by Andrew McGill published by the Atlantic magazine there was a table of demographics to illustrate which elements were helpful and which were harmful in regard to Donald Trump’s triumph.2 One of the indisputable definitions of the elections was the economic

1 See Figure 1 in the Appendix 2 See Figure 2 in the Appendix

discontent which was decisively won by the populists. However, far more important elements were the decisions of people with college education (bachelor degree or higher) and those who did not. College educated people are generally believed to have more liberal tendencies and views and are less prone to be burdened by unemployment and they also have generally higher incomes. But this connection was not that determining in this election as people in counties with higher-educated people voted for Hillary Clinton even if they had not have particularly high incomes. McGill devised a term “home-gap” meaning that people in communities with less educated population had limited views of the future, compared to the people living in more cosmopolitan cities where the people are more educated and have more insights into the globalized world. (McGill, America’s Ed- ucational Divide)

Donald Trump’s support from the economically insecure middle class workers who helped his rise in Rustbelt states was a major part of his success, however, it was not only those people who had supported him. “Rust Belt” refers to “that part of the U.S. compris- ing many of the states of the Midwest and the Northeast, characterized as an area marked by diminishing population, aging factories, decreasing production as of steel and auto- mobiles, etc.” (Rust Belt, Collins Dictionary) Of the total 69 percent of white voters in the 2016 election, 58 percent voted for Donald Trump and the number of white men who voted for Donald Trump was 63 percent. As for the “educational division”, 54% of college-educated white people voted for Mr. Trump, even though Hillary Clinton was likely to win these votes.3 (Henley, White and wealthy voters)

According to the data available from surveys there were indications that African-Ameri- can and Latino population had low levels of information about politics, but other surveys have shown that there was a significant number of white respondents who scored low in political knowledge as well. (Fording and Schram 11)

Social psychologists used a term “Need for Cognition” and claimed that the low information people score low in this matter which could be connected with lacking critical thinking when choosing a candidate. Additionally, such people were in “Need for Affect” which means that they relied more on the appeals to their emotions and they were more

3 See Figure 3 in the Appendix

vulnerable to be emotionally manipulated. These factors were likely caused that such voters overlooked the misstatements and untruths Donald Trump’s speeches. This hy- pothesis was compared to the analysis of the ANES Pilot Study from 2016, which showed that the people with low need for cognition were more prone to vote for Donald Trump. (Fording and Schram 12)

In an article by Alec Tyson and Shiva Maniam published at the Pew Research Center website there were another figures regarding the educational division in the 2016 election available.4 The college graduates voted for Hillary Clinton with 52 percent and 43 percent for Donald Trump. Voters who did not have college degree voted for Donald Trump with 52% and 44% for Hillary. According to Mr. Tyson and Mr. Maniam this has been the widest division since 1980. Back in 2012 the difference was nowhere near that significant with college graduates voting for Barrack Obama by 50 percent and 48 percent for Mitt Romney and also the people without college education voted for Obama with 51 percent to 47 percent for Romney. (Tyson, Behind Trump's victory: Divisions)

Donald Trump won the white non-college vote decisively, but there was also significant support from the voters with college education, who were thought to potentially vote for Hillary Clinton. Trump’s support was 67 percent of white non-college educated people while the support for Clinton by people of this group was only 28 percent. As for the white population with college degree, they supported Donald Trump by 49 percent to 45 percent for Hillary Clinton. (Tyson)

The partisanship in the levels of education could be seen also in a figure of the exit polls by the Edison Research for the National Election Pool, which was published in the Busi- ness Insider magazine and was based on 23 451 respondents. Fifty-one percent of voters with high school education or less voted for Trump, compared to the 45 percent who voted for Clinton. People with some college or associate degree voted for Donald Trump with 52 percent and with 43 percent for Hillary Clinton. College graduates voted more significantly for Clinton with 49 percent to 45 percent for Trump, and finally the post- graduates voted with 37 percent for Donald Trump and 58 percent for Hillary Clinton. (Gould and Harrington, 7 charts)

4 See Figure 4 in the Appendix

Donald Trump knew that his base of non-college-educated supporters from the Rust Belt states was the one that would have decisive impact on his journey to success in the presidential race. Trump embraced this opportunity and aimed his populistic rhetoric to these people in particular. According to Michelle Diggles, a policy analyst at Third Way, Don- ald Trump tried to push away people with college education because there was a chance that they could consider the issues that Trump have tried to demonize, such as immigration and global trade, as something positive as they are less likely to be as frustrated as the working class people. (Gambino, I love the poorly educated)

According to the Third Way survey nearly half of the non-college white respondents believed that the economy was rigged and 45 percent of them also thought that the system was against them and 29 percent of the college-educated agreed with this view. In contrast almost half of the college-educated white respondents claimed that they did not believe that the economy was rigged by the wealthy. Mrs. Diggles also stated the following: “White people without college degree are much more likely to see a rigged system, to see the forces of globalization acting against them and they don’t feel like they have control over their own destiny.” (Gambino, I love the poorly educated)

The non-college educated voters constituted around two-thirds of Donald Trump’s during the primaries and in the general election they made around three-fifths of his supporters which shows that there was considerably more non-college educated supporters than the ones with college degree in the base of Trump’s supporters. (Griffin and Teixeira, The Story of Trump’s Appeal)

As for the college-educated voters of Donald Trump, the votersstudygroup.org conducted a study in which they call such voters “Free Marketers” and they were characterized as free traders with average or liberal views regarding immigration and race and having the highest education levels and incomes of all Trump’s supporters. They were also characterized as the most liberal in regard to immigration and American identity. Although they were the least likely to support Donald Trump, they almost always voted for Republicans and their inclination was also most probably caused by their hostility against Hillary Clin- ton as 99 percent of them claimed that they did not feel favorable towards her. They also

claimed that they voted for Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election. (Ekins, The Five Types of Trump’s Voters)

The “American Preservationists were the less educated group of Trump’s voters and they also had lowest incomes, along with “The Disengaged”, who also lacked enough political facts and felt alienated from the political elites and institutions. The group with relatively moderate levels of education was the group called “Anti-elites”. (Ekins)

The division among Republican voters was a significant change in the US election history as the white college-educated voters had not supported a Democratic presidential candidate for more than 50 years. (Bellini, College-Educated Whites Away From GOP, 0:35)

3.2. Views on the American identity and the future It is quite clear that there was no such thing as one kind of Donald Trump voter as there were several demographic elements and various reasons of the voters in decisions regarding the 2016 presidential race.

As it was previously mentioned, Emily Ekins defined the five types of Donald Trump’s groups of voters according to their views and preferences. Trump was not a typical Re- publican candidate as he only gained 36 percent of the Republican votes in the early primaries and the other 64 percent went to the other candidates. The difference in November was striking, though, as he received 94 percent of the primary voters of the Republican Party and 79 percent of all Republican respondents. That led to conclusions that Trump’s supporters did not share all their views. The groups were called “Staunch Conservatives”, “Free Marketers”, “American Preservationists”, “Anti-elites” and “The Disengaged”. The study divided them into five groups and the first was called “Staunch Conservatives” and they were the second most loyal supporters and were characterized by having quite nativist conception of American identity, were very likely to own guns and have average education levels. Their view of a true American was a Christian and therefore they did not hold positive views on immigration and Muslims. Their major worry was also the discrimination of whites and their views on issues such as same-sex marriage were quite conservative. (Ekins)

Another group of voters who held nativist views on immigration and socio-cultural conception of American identity were the “American Preservationists”. They had strong sense of their own racial identity as Christians and therefore they opposed both illegal and legal immigration and believed that real Americans were the ones born in the United States or who have lived there for the major part of their lives and they also had to be Christians. The “Anti-Elites” were characteristic by not particularly warm feelings toward Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and they believed that the political elites were inclined to support the wealthier part of the US public. Their views on immigration and American identity are not as radical as with “American Preservationists”. The last group were the “Disengaged” who considered themselves alien to the political system and thus felt powerless to change the political and economic situation. They held skeptical views towards the immigration. (Ekins)

There were significant divisions among the voters. According to a study by Pew Research Center5 showed that the voters of Hillary Clinton thought the country have made a little progress in economy over the course of Barrack Obama’s rule, in contrast to Donald Trump’s voters who considered the situation of the country worsened. As for the immigration issue, Trump’s voters held pessimistic views on this issue with 79 percent thinking that immigration was a big problem, while only 20 percent of Clinton’s voters thought the same. The issue of terrorism was viewed as a serious threat by 74 percent of Trump’s voters as well as the rise of crimes. Donald Trump’s voters also considered the job opportunities in the US to be much more serious problem compared to Hillary Clinton’s voters. Racism and sexism was viewed as a serious problem mostly among the Clinton’s voters with 53 percent for racism and 37 percent for sexism, compared to Trump’s voters with 21 percent for racism and 7 percent for sexism. (Fingerhut, A Divided and Pessimis- tic Electorate)

As for the views for future, there was a survey conducted right before the election.6 The voters held pessimistic views in the potential new administrations of both of the presidential candidates in terms of transparency, governing and moral standards. As for the moral standards, majority of respondents claimed that the morals would decline were

5 See Figure 6 in the Appendix 6 See Figure 7 in the Appendix

Donald Trump to become the next president (61 percent), 57 percent claimed that he would not improve the US’s position in the world and 55 percent said that the governing processes would not be improved and neither would the transparency. The views were considered negatively also by Clinton’s voters. (Fingerhut, A Divided and Pessimistic Electorate)

Americans seemed to hold frustrating views on the future prosperity of the United States had been deeply divided in terms of views on race, age and politics. The most frustrated ones were mostly the white voters, who claimed that the life for “people like them” has gotten worse over the past half century. (Fingerhut, Views of the primaries, press coverage of candidates)

Significant disagreements could be seen regarding the views on immigration as the majority of Donald Trump’s supporters viewed immigration as a burden for the country. (Fingerhut, Views on immigration, diversity and social issues)

There were visible anxieties in the society regarding politics and race and Donald Trump’s supporters expressed worries about the growing cultural diversity and about the globalizing economy. In an article, published by the Atlantic magazine, there were results from several follow-up interviews with Trump supporters and they worried about the country declining both in economy and in culture. As for the views on for the future, 32 percent of Millennials (people who were born around the year 2000 according to the Cambridge dictionary) expected more opportunities for the young people of today. About three-fourths of voters of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump held pessimistic views about the chances of the next generations as 56 percent of the respondents had expected the today’s adults to have less opportunities. “You don’t have a chance to have a nest egg, to retire on…I mean, right now if I was 21 years old today, and I just got married, I would terribly concerned on bringing children into the world the way it looks like it’s headed under the past leadership we have had.” (Brownstein, A referendum on America’s Na- tional Identity)

About one-third of Donald Trump’s supporters held pessimistic views in regard to the cultural and ethnic diversity of children in schools, compared to 53 percent of Hillary Clinton’s supporters who viewed this fact as something positive. (Brownstein)

3.2.1. Opioid problems The drug overdose epidemic in the United States has been an unprecedented problem of the recent years. According to an article by the Guardian in 2014 overdosing on drugs had killed more people than car accidents or gun incidents. The crisis began in a rural area called central Appalachia, which is the major part area of West Virginia and eastern Kentucky and the drugs involved mostly painkillers and heroin. (Popovich, America’s drug overdose epidemic)

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center7 62 percent of Donald Trump’s supporters considered the drug addiction to be a major problem and this matter was viewed similarly by Hillary Clinton supporters with 56 percent. (Fingerhut, A Divided and Pes- simistic Electorate)

A study conducted by Shannon Monnat has shown that Donald Trump succeeded in counties with the highest rates of drug, alcohol and suicide.8 As it was previously mentioned the economic factor was one of the major elements in the 2016 elections and with the rise of unemployment and wage stagnations in the Industrial Midwest led to strengthening of the support for Trump. Appalachia was the region which was the breeding ground of the opioid crisis because of its poverty. The drug overdose problem was referred to as “Deaths of Despair” and such deaths were higher among non-Hispanic whites compared to other ethnic and racial groups. (Monnat, Deaths of Despair, 1-2)

Donald Trump linked this crisis to the immigration coming from Mexico on his Twitter account. “Heroin overdoses are taking over our children and others in the MIDWEST. Coming in from our southern border. We need strong border & WALL” (@real- DonaldTrump, Heroin overdoses)

3.2.2. America First “America First” is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as “designating an attitude or organ- ization that aims to put the interests of the U.S. before those of the international community.” (America First, Oxford Dictionaries)

7 See Figure 6 in the Appendix 8 See Figure 8 in the Appendix

Donald Trump made it clear that his aims as the US president would be to always act in the best interest of the American people by stressing “America first” in areas such as trade, taxes or immigration policy. He stressed this also in his inauguration speech in January 2017. “From this day forward, it is going to be only America first.” (Trump: America first and only America first, CNN)

Donald Trump’s patriotism was built on appeals to the feelings of decline in the lives of the American people, especially those who were low-educated and felt as if they had been isolated from the world. (Liu, The patriotism of fighting Trump)

“America first” was the underlying theme of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign when referring to the approaches in foreign policy. According to Trump this expression meant that he as a president would “prevent other nations from taking advantage of the United States.” (Rothman, History behind Donald Trump’s “America First”)

In the Guardian’s article called “Inside a Donald Trump rally: good people in a feedback loop of paranoia and hate”, there was a video from inside of one of Donald Trump’s rallies and there was one of Trump’s supporters, John Hearl, who explained his support for Donald Trump by stating, that Donald Trump “speaks his own mind”. He continued: “Trump is going to say what needs to be said, and if that offends somebody, well then, they just have to understand the goal of all this. America first.” (Pilkington, Inside a Don- ald Trump rally)

In an article published by the Guardian there were six Donald Trump’s supporters interviewed and they stated reasons why they had voted for Trump. Most of them were not satisfied with the economic situation in the country and saw Mr. Trump as someone who will help the United States prosper and that he would make sure to create jobs for the American people rather than for the immigrants. (Fishwick, Why did people vote for Donald Trump)

“America first” is closely aligned to patriotism, which can be defined as “the feeling of loving your country more than any others and being proud of it”. (Patriotism, Cambridge Dictionary)

A survey conducted by Fox News in June 2016 showed that 63 percent of Donald Trump’s voters would describe themselves as being patriots. (2016 Data Point: Patriotism in an election year) Donald Trump’s anti-immigration speech was followed by a claim that the American schools should stress the importance of patriotic values. “We will stop apologising for America, and we will start celebrating America.” (D. Roberts and Carrol, Trump to promote American “patriotism” in schools)

Trump also claimed that he would consult the veterans from the military in regard to such matters while promoting pride in being and American in schools and stressing the need for respect for the American flag. Those claims were promoting strengthening the feelings of “Americanism” and putting it above the worldwide globalist tendencies. Donald Trump also vowed to put the visa applicants through ideological tests. “We will be united by our common culture, values and principles - becoming one American nation.” (D. Roberts and Carrol)

3.3. Willful ignorance This chapter aims to explain the reasons of the groups of Donald Trump’s supporters who were often the targets of his callous remarks and considered “out-groups”, posing a threat to the traditional conservative American values - women and Hispanic voters.

Willful ignorance can be defined as “the practice or act of intentional and blatant avoid- ance, disregard or disagreement with facts, empirical evidence and well-founded arguments because they oppose or contradict your own existing personal beliefs.” (Willful ignorance, Urban Dictionary)

3.3.1. Women voters Donald Trump’s remarks aimed at women were often labelled “sexist” and “misogynist”. (Nelson, Donald Trump’s history of misogyny, sexism) Sexism can be defined as “prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially: discrimination against women”. (Mer- riam-Webster.com, Sexism) Misogyny is defined as “hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women, or prejudice against women”. (Misogyny, Dictionary.com)

Donald Trump’s attitude towards women could be described as sexist as the history of his harsh remarks about women reaches more than a decade back before the presidential campaign. Trump himself claimed that such comments were made just for “entertainment”. (Nelson) Donald Trump mentioned women’s physical appearance when he wanted to offend them, but also when he wanted to compliment them and did so “even if the context is odd or inappropriate”. (Nelson)

Trump offended also his then-Republican rival Carly Fiorina for her visage in an interview for Rolling Stone. “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?” (Solotaroff, Trump Seriously) His sexist comments, however, did not stop during the campaign. Among his most offensive remarks are the infamous remarks on comedian Rosie O’Donnell, as well as Bette Midler or Heidi Klum. (Nelson, L.)

Mr. Trump, known for his anti-abortion rhetoric, stated that if the abortions would ever be prohibited in the United States, the women should be punished. He later claimed that it would be the “person performing the abortion” who should be punished. (Pearson, 16 Real Things Trump Has Said)

Such behavior raises questions as to why the women, who had been often targets of Don- ald Trump’s tough and sexist comments, voted for him in the presidential election.

According to the exit polls 42 percent of respondents who voted for Donald Trump were women, compared to 53 percent of men who supported Trump. Such gender gap in the vote preferences has been the widest since 1972. 9 (Tyson, Behind Trump's victory: Di- visions)

According to a survey conducted by Pew Research Center only 34 percent of respondents who supported Donald Trump thought that he had a great deal of respect for women, but 82 percent considered him to have at least a fair amount of respect for women.10 (Fin- gerhut, How voters view Clinton and Trump’s respect)

9 See Figure 9 in the Appendix 10 See Figure 10 in the Appendix

An article by professors Laura Morgan Roberts and Robin Ely dealt with the women voters and their reasons to vote for Donald Trump. According to the exit polls most of the women who voted for Donald Trump were working class white women without college degrees with 62 percent of the Republican women vote. Many of the women felt frustrated as they feared that there would not be enough work opportunities for their hus- bands and sons who would not be able to take care of their families. Such fears were strengthened by Donald Trump’s “us vs. them” rhetoric in regard to the immigration and these people were prone to be frustrated as they had little personal contact with immigrants. (L. Roberts, Why Did So Many White Women Vote for Donald Trump)

There were also white women who were college educated and supported Donald Trump with 45 percent of college-educated women voting for him as some of them were very likely to vote for him based on his fiscally conservative policies. Research also suggested that both men and women had an idea of a successful leader associated with Donald Trump because of his successful business career. Their idea was associated with mascu- linity as they deeply scrutinized everyone who did not meet their image of a competent masculine leader and that was the reason why for them the way Clinton handled the affair with her emails was far more damaging than the controversial deeds of Trump. According to the exit polls 20 percent of people who claimed that they did not like Donald Trump ended up voting for him in the election anyway. (L. Roberts)

In an article by the Slate magazine there was a suggestion by Mrs. Anderson, former Slate’s associate editor, that one of the reasons of the women voting for Donald Trump were their racist views which made them feel that the privileges of the white people should be put above all else, such as healthcare or family leave. Another thing was willful ignorance when one of the women interviewed by New York magazine claimed that she had heard about the tape in which Donald Trump confessed to groping women and that she even considered it to be a good thing. (Anderson, White Women Sold Out the Sister- hood)

The New York Times published an article focusing on the white women who voted for Donald Trump. One of them was Maureen Sullivan, who claimed the following to suggest that Trump’s attitudes towards woman were not worse than those of Bill Clinton: “Hillary will be bringing Bill Clinton back into the White House. Everyone should be aware that

the former president, who was impeached, lied about at least one sexual assault and used another woman, an intern, as a sex toy in the Oval Office.” (Rogers, White Women Helped Elect Donald Trump)

There was another New York Times article which featured interviews with the women voters of Mr. Trump. One of them, Ms. Biro, who has been a Democrat for all of her life, but for the 2016 presidential election she turned Republican. Her reason to vote for Trump was a belief that he was “a strong leader, and he’ll get things done.” She also admired him for taking care of the veterans as her father served in the Korean War because of the fact that Trump did not attend Iowa debate to host a fundraiser for the veterans. (Stolberg, The Women Who Helped Donald Trump to Victory)

Women voting for Donald Trump also considered him to be the only one who could fix the way that America was heading. They also expressed concerns about their daughters’ future as they wanted them to become independent business women like Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka. Many of them were offended by the comments captured on the infamous tape, yet they still voted for him. (Stolberg)

“I think that women see the big picture - women are smart. The fact tat he said something crude is not going to change my mind about the good he can do for our country.” said Mrs. Gauta, one of Trump’s women voters. (Stolberg)

Not all the women who voted for Donald Trump were white. An African-American ac- tivist, Daphne Goggins, said that she considered the Democratic efforts too little to improve the lives of black people. She was among the 4 percent of black women to support Trump, according to the exit polls. The women in the article also expressed fears of immigration and terroristic threats. According to a pollster Celinda Lake most of the women supporting Trump were white blue-collar women workers. (Stolberg)

Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson referred to the women who voted for Donald Trump as the “shy vote”. The women of color voted for Hillary Clinton by 94 percent of black women and 68 percent of Latinas, according to the data from the exit polls. Ac- cording to Mikki Kendall, a feminist cultural critic, the white women supporters did not

consider racism to be a significant issue. “For them, it’s not real. They don’t have to worry about it, so you must be exaggerating.” (Beckett, L., The real “shy Trump” vote)

Although Hillary Clinton was generally believed to earn most of the women votes, more women ended up supporting Donald Trump. According to the interviews with them the reason for such decision was mainly due to his successful carreer of a businessman and also because of his strong policy positions, which for them was more important than the idea of Clinton being the first female US president. One of the women interviewed was Aimee Riley, an orthopedic surgeon from Virginia and she claimed that she was afraid of the tax rise for top earners, especially because she had worked herself up out of poverty. (Beckett, The real “shy Trump” vote)

Many of the white women also stressed that it was important for them that Donald Trump was against abortions. One of the supporters Ms Jones claimed the following: “I was delighted to vote for Donald Trump, because he’s a pro-life advocate.” (Beckett, The real “shy Trump” vote)

“I voted for Trump because America has struggled with simple economics and needs a change. I also want someone who is angry about terrorism and radical Islam,” said another of Trump’s supporters Ms. Whitmire. She also claimed that she disagreed with the way Donald Trump spoke and behaved, but these elements did not stop her from voting for him as she believed that such language and behavior would not interfere with the reasons why she wanted him to run the office. (Beckett, The real “shy Trump” vote)

After the release of the 2005 compromising tape where Mr. Trump boasted about groping women, it was believed that this was something that would lead to the decline of people wanting to vote for him, women especially, but it actually made the white women downplay this as something that would not prevent him from making the changes that they had desired. Ms. Jones had said that Trump respected women because he cared deeply about his wife and daughters, as well as his female employees, therefore he had fundamental respect for the women. As for the comments on the tape, she claimed that he was an “imperfect person, like all of us”. (Beckett, The real “shy Trump” vote)

The white women also stated that they considered Hillary Clinton’s political record and failings to be far more troubling than any of Donald Trump’s deeds. “To me, Hillary’s cover-up story on Benghazi and repeated lies to the American people are extremely corrupt,” was one of the claims by Ms. Whitmire. Another one of Trump’s women supporters was Ms. Cipperly from Pennsylvania and she said that she considered Mr. Trump to be the lesser evil. Although she had been a lifelong Democrat, she believed that his lack of political facts and experience would improve with time. (Beckett, The real “shy Trump” vote)

An article by the New York Times focused on the reasons of the women who supported Trump and there were the main reasons summarized as fears of terrorism and immigration, opposition to abortion, unsatisfactory state of the economy, anger about Obamacare as well as the prices in health care and also protection of the rights stated in the Second Amendment (gun ownership). Many of the women voters who supported Donald Trump voted against Hillary Clinton and emphasized the Benghazi and emails affairs. (Chira, You Focus on the Good)

One of them was a nurse from Michigan, Rebecca Gregory, who had previously voted for Barrack Obama, but with the growing racial diversity and shifts in economy she voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. She also expressed concerns about the lack of support for the police force under Obama. She was anxious about the immigrants in the US who were in her opinion treated better than the regular US citizens. As an example she described a moment when an Iraqi immigrant came into a hospital and needed a dial- ysis and she had claimed that he would never be productive in the US as he would be dependent because of his health issues. She contrasted this with homeless people, who had not been taken care of and emphasized that America should take care of her own citizens in need first. (Chira)

Sandy Pearson, another one of Donald Trump’s women supporters, claimed that Donald Trump had imperfections, but that she believed him to be a good man deep inside who cared about his country. She also stated that she had not been offended by his harsh remarks on women because she tried to “focus on the good”. At the early stages of the presidential race she thought about supporting Bernie Sanders, but eventually she voted for Donald Trump. (Chira)

Deb Alighire, an engineer and program manager at Mopar, said that she believed Trump knew “how to build things”. She also expressed concerns about immigration and she described an encounter with Somali taxi driver who had claimed that American women had too much freedom. After giving this example she concluded that she was aware of the hardships that immigrants have been going through, but she was not willing to risk the decline of American feminism due to that. (Chira)

Taylor Davis, a small business worker, had been a supporter of Barrack Obama and Ber- nie Sanders, but after Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton, she could not stand it. She believed that Trump would help improve the job opportunities. She also admired his daughter Ivanka for her “women who work” campaign. (Chira)

One of the women, Guzin Karides, a former attorney, believed that Trump to be a voice for women. “Look at how much Trump hires women, how much he does rely on women, how much he relies on his own daughter.” Even though she initially had not considered voting for Donald Trump, she changed her mind as she believed that he was genuinely interested in helping people. (Chira)

3.3.2. Latino voters According to the CNN’s exit polls, 28 percent of Latino voters supported Donald Trump.11 Most of the pre-election polls suggested lower support for Donald Trump than what the exit polls had shown, for example in the National Survey of Latinos conducted by the Pew Research Center only 19 percent of Latino registered voters claimed that they would support Donald Trump. There was, however, a big turnout in the Latino vote in the days before the Election Day according to the polls, especially from the ones from Florida and Nevada. (Krogstad and Lopez, Hillary Clinton won Latino vote)

There were two major assumptions in regard to the Latino vote in the 2016 presidential election: that they would oppose Donald Trump on Election Day and that his anti-immigration rhetoric often aimed at people of Mexican origin would push the conservative Hispanics away from the Republican Party. Anthony Suarez, a Republican lawyer from

11 See Figure 11 in the Appendix

Florida and a president of a Puerto Rican Bar Association, stated that even though he voted for Clinton, there were many people who voted for Donald Trump and he referred to them as “Trump Hispanics”. (Khalid, Latinos Will Never Vote A Republican)

The reason of many of the Latino voters was religion and family values. Donald Trump tried to appeal to these values of Latino conservative Christians. He had created a His- panic advisory council and both Trump's sons had also visited Latino congregation right before the election. “So, I ended up voting for Donald Trump ‘cause I thought he was closer to the values that I have,” claimed one of Donald Trump’s Latino supporters, a 23- year-old Josef Adorno. He admitted though that he did not consider him a perfect person and would prefer Marco Rubio. (Khalid) Another one of Trump’s Latino supporters, Orlando Diaz, claimed that he liked Trump for being defying the traditional values as being a “different kind of Republican” and he also admired him for his promises for veterans and army. He had been a Democrat all his life and voted for Obama in 2012 and he wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders. When Sand- ers was out of the picture, he decided to vote for Trump as he did not like Hillary Clinton. (Khalid, A.)

As for the anti-immigration comments, Mr. Diaz said that he had been aware of his rhetoric but he was not offended by it since he did not consider his remarks to be addressed to the whole Hispanic community. (Khalid)

Julian Camacho, a Latino voter from California whose immigrant family have been living in the US for generation, said that Donald Trump’s anti-Mexican rhetoric did not bother him as in his opinion Trump was talking about people who came to America illegally. (Khalid)

Flaminio Guerrero from Columbia, a first generation immigrant living in Georgia, said that he was ashamed of a stereotype that people coming from countries such as Columbia, but he admitted that the stereotype was valid as Columbia really was exporting large number of drugs at the time of his arrival to the United States. He considered his vote for Donald Trump as a vote for better economy. “I liked the fact that he’s not an insider; he comes from the outside; he comes from the business world. He knows how to negotiate.” (Khalid)

In an article by the Guardian there were mentioned reports of Latinos in Nevada protest- ing against Donald Trump on the Election night with hashtag “Somos El Muro” - “We Are The Wall”. But in the end the Latino community did not behave as a unified angry group to oppose Donald Trump. According to John Paul Brammer there have been a lack of critical view at the Latino community as they were very complex group of people. He also pointed out that there have been a “definite current of conservatism” among the immigrant families which explained the turnout in Latino votes for Donald Trump. (Bram- mer, ‘The Latino vote’ didn’t overwhelm Trump, because we’re not all the same)

Another article published by the Guardian focused on the reasons of Hispanic voters which drove them to support Donald Trump. Robert Rodriguez from California said that Trump had been a “wakeup call” for America as disagreed with Hillary Clinton’s idea of open borders. According to Mr. Rodriguez Clinton would have been the continuation of Barrack Obama’s immigration policies and he feared that this would lead to illegal immigrants crossing the US border freely. He also stressed that he and his father had strong sense of patriotism and believed that every newcomer had to go through the same process as they had if they wanted to come to America. Mr. Rodriguez also claimed that he liked the fact that Donald Trump was not an established politician and that he was telling the “hard” truth. (Gambino, L., Viva Trump)

Another one of Trump’s Hispanic supporters was Ximena Baretto, also from California, claimed that she thought that the Democrats have been treating all the Latinos as if they were one homogenous group. She addressed the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando and connected it with the immigration issues, saying: “There are dangerous people coming across our borders. Trump was right. Some are rapists and criminals, but some are good people, too. But how do we know who is who, when you come here illegally?” Ms. Baretto claimed that she had to go through a long-term process to be able to stay in the US and that the other people coming to America should go through the same process as well. (Gambino, Viva Trump)

Bethran Usher, also one of the Latino supporters of Donald Trump and a political science student, claimed he was fed up with the politically correct speeches. He said that he and his parents disagreed on political visions as his mother was a Democrat and his father a Republican. Mr. Usher also claimed that he supported gay rights and he wanted stricter

foreign policy, but he did not agree with deportation of children of immigrants that had been brought to the country illegally. “Trump can be a nut, but I think he’s the best candidate in this election.” (Gambino, Viva Trump)

Mr. Navarro, a businessman and Donald Trump Latino supporter, said that was inspired by Donald Trump’s “Art of the Deal” and that he admired Trump for what he had achieved in business. He also did not agree with the “labelling” of people based on their race, ethnicity and gender as he was proud to be both Hispanic and American and that he and his family had come to the US legally and other immigrants should do the same. (Gambino, Viva Trump)

A student and Donald Trump Latina supporter Ms. Rivera was not able to vote because of her Mexican citizenship, but she said that she supported Trump as only candidate who was against abortion. She disagreed with some of Donald Trump’s immigration promises as she did not believe that a wall at the Southern border would have been effective. (Gam- bino, Viva Trump)

Ms. Desilets, a student of political science and economics, was a Hispanic conservative Republican and she was impressed by Donald Trump’s plan for the economy with lower taxes and regulations which would bring more money to the State Treasury. She also agreed with his strong immigration policies. (Gambino, Viva Trump)

Most of the Latino supporters agreed with Trump on his economic and immigration agen- das based on the interviews in this article. Other opinions were that they supported him because of his strong family bonds and some also claimed that Donald Trump was right with his harsh comments about Mexicans. A woman, who had been a lifelong Democrat, claimed that one of the reasons she turned Republican was because the media and networks “vilified” Trump and at the same time Clinton was not held responsible for Ben- ghazi. (Gambino, Viva Trump)

CBS News published a documentary on Youtube including interviews with Latinos who supported Donald Trump. Miriam Cepeda, a second generation Mexican-American, said at the beginning of this video that she had some family members who were involved in criminal activities as Donald Trump mentioned in his anti-immigration speech and that

she would be glad for them to be deported from the US. (CBS News, Latinos for Trump, 0:54) Ms. Cepeda also mentioned that she was able to say what was on people’s mind. She confirmed that some of her relatives were involved in criminal activities and that even her father was in jail at that time. (CBS, Latinos for Trump, 2:17-2:44)

Tony Castañeda, a former police chief living right on the Mexican-Texas border, said that he witnessed narcotics traffickers who smuggled goods to the US and that he participated in their arrests. He also expressed worries in regard to the undocumented immigrants. (CBS, Latinos for Trump, 2:50-4:15)

Hector Garza, a Mexican-American border patrol agent, said that there was a need for a physical barrier at the border as the river was not enough to stop the illegal immigration and drug trafficking. (CBS, Latinos for Trump, 3:50-4:00)

In May 2016 23% of Latinos said that they would support Donald Trump in the General Election, according to Fox News Poll. (CBS, Latinos for Trump, 5:46)

Frank Santos, a first generation Mexican-American said that when Donald Trump addressed to Mexicans as “rapists” he was not offended because he believed that Trump had not all the Mexicans on mind when he said that. (CBS, Latinos for Trump, 8:20-8:34)

4. The Role of Media Another significant element contributed to Donald Trump presidential victory was defi- nitely the use of media. He was able to attract and keep the attention to himself and even though he was labelled “outsider” by most of the mainstream media, he defied the odds and became the new US president. Trump’s use of social media, especially Twitter, was exceptional and helped him keep the attention that he needed.

4.1. Donald Trump’s transformation of the news According to Pavel Kasík, an editor of Technet, who was a guest in iDnes.cz’s Rozstřel discussion program, the media helped Donald Trump get the attention that he needed at the very beginning of the presidential race when he was not considered an eligible candidate. Trump used his experience from his wide TV history and the media had kept reporting about him because of curiosity and controversy of his statements and that was exactly what Mr. Trump needed. According to Kasík the media enjoyed covering stories about Donald Trump because they did not consider him a serious candidate and by the time they realized that he was to be taken seriously and that their attention was part of his plan all along, it was too late for them to lower the “Trump coverage”. “Every time someone said ‘Trump could not be a president’ the connection of ‘Trump’ and ‘president’ resonated with many and Donald Trump knew that he would benefit from this.” (Kasík and Vokál, Trump a média, 0:25-2:00)

Donald Trump was not popular among America’s newspapers, which could be confirmed by the fact that only two of the top hundred circulation print newspapers endorsed him. The media labelled him as being vulgar and they tried to “warn” the public about Donald Trump. Only the fact that Donald Trump became a presidential candidate was, according to professor Jeff Jarvis, considered a “failure of journalism”. (Sillito, How the media created the president)

Donald Trump received enormous coverage especially by CNN, mostly for the ratings. An interesting element in this was the fact that CNN chief Jeff Zucker was also Donald Trump’s employer back in the times of “The Apprentice”. (Sillito)

4.1.1. Fake News phenomenon Fake News had been a significant factor in the 2016 election and especially in Donald Trump’s campaign. The term itself can be defined as “false stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke”. (Fake news, Cambridge Dictionary)

For purposes of this section it is essential to explain the “Democratic Advantage” and “Need for Cognition” which were significant elements in the support for Donald Trump and the differences in need for fact-checking.

Democrats had an increasing advantage among nonwhites and college-educated whites and they had a decline of support among white people and mostly of those without a college education who fled to the Republican Party in 2016. (Sides)

The term “Need for Cognition” is used by psychologists when referring to people with low levels of education who lack critical thinking and thus can be easily manipulated by appeals to their emotions. Such people were more prone to vote for Donald Trump as they ignored the misstatements and untruths in his speeches. (Fording and Schram 12)

Many have addressed the 2016 election to be “post-fact”. One of them was Jonathan Aberman, a media commentator from Washington, who argued that America had been “in the midst of its first ‘post-fact’ election” and one of the main contributors to this had been Steve Bannon’s website Breitbart, which had been trafficking in ignorance of facts. (Levick, Trump’s New Brand)

Post-fact or post-truth can be defined as “of or relating to a culture in which appeals to the emotions tend to prevail over facts and logical arguments”. (Post-truth, Collins Dic- tionary)

Concerns have risen among the public and highly positioned politicians regarding the spread of fake news and their impact. According to a survey by Pew Research Center 64 percent of a little over 1000 respondents said that completely made-up news caused a

great deal of confusion.12 Thirty-nine percent of them said that they felt confident to no- tice the difference between real and made-up stories. As for the Republican and Demo- cratic voters - their views were almost the same in terms of numbers with 57 percent of Republicans claiming that fake news caused great deal of confusion and the same was said by 64 percent of Democrats. (Barthel, Fake News Sowing Confusion)

Political statements fact-checking website Politico investigated Donald Trump’s campaign statements and showed that 70 percent of his statements were false, compared to 26 percent of false statements by Hillary Clinton. Only 4 percent of Trump’s claims were completely true and 11 percent mostly true. A term “truthful hyperbole” was invented by his ghostwriter in Trump’s autobiography and it was used to refer to Donald Trump’s stretching of truths in closing trade deals and people who have followed Trump’s career considered him to have embraced this term. Donald Trump also used constant repetition of false statements during his campaign to make them appear truthful. (Konnikova et al., Trump’s Lies)

False information is believed to have even more power in politics, especially if it is cor- responds to pre-existing beliefs and bias which often leads to the information being ac- cepted as true in one’s mind. According to Leda Cosmides from Santa Barbara University Donald Trump’s campaign was mostly about moral outrage and such outrage could over- weigh the need for truth in people who relied on their emotions. (Konnikova et al.)

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist from Dartmouth University, said that Trump’s claims about Mexican “rapists” were related to ethno-nationalism and palpated into the very core some people’s views of their own identity, consequently leading to them being “less willing or able to evaluate the statement empirically.” (Konnikova et al.)

Fact-checking became essential for most journalist during the 2016 campaign. CNN was also fact-checking Donald Trump right on screen from time to time. “All of the media has embraced fact-checking because there was a story that really needed it.” (Stelter, Donald Trump fact-checking)

12 See Figure 12 in the Appendix

Daniel Dale from Toronto Star created a “TrumpCheck” where he accounted every Trump’s statement. He also fact-checked both candidates during the first presidential debate where he counted exaggerations as false claims as well. Donald Trump uttered 33 false claims and Hillary Clinton four and similar pattern could be seen also in the two other debates. Trump’s supporters believed that in his speeches he was getting at “deeper truth”, despite the fact that he often confused many basic facts. A part of his supporters also rejected the fact-checking completely as they considered it biased. (Stelter)

Donald Trump himself was trying to undermine the reliability and objectivity of fact- checkers as “dishonest scum”. As one of many examples of his false claims could be the one about Ted Cruz’s father conspiring with J. F. Kennedy’s assassin and he continued in this claim even after Ted Cruz dropped out of the primary race. Trump also accused Barrack Obama of supporting terrorists and as an evidence he cited the infamous Breitbart News. (Kiely, The Whoopers of 2016)

The FactCheck.org article presented the most significant false claims by Donald Trump. Mr. Trump claimed back in February 2016 that the unemployment rate was at 42 percent, even though the rate was actually 4.9 percent. His false claims about unemployment have not stopped even after he was elected president. Another of his false claims was about the US murder rate of 2015 as Trump claimed it to be “the highest in 45 years” when in reality it was lower than 45 years ago and in the time between 1965 and 2009. There was, however, a one-year increase in 2014, but that did not mean that the murder rate of 2015 had been the “highest in 45 years”. (Kiely)

Another significant false claim was one of many to harm Hillary Clinton’s electability and it was the one that had sparked the outrage about Benghazi. Donald Trump claimed that a US Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens was “left helpless to die” during the attacks in Benghazi and Clinton, then a Secretary of State had done nothing to prevent this. Trump later admitted that he had no evidence to support this claim. (Kiely)

One of Donald Trump’s final harsh statements about Hillary Clinton involved labelling her as “corrupt”. “She is likely to be under investigation for many years, probably con- cluding in a very large criminal trial.” This was negated by many, especially by then-FBI

director James Comey, who had led an investigation of Clinton and her colleagues regarding the careless handling of highly classified intelligence, said that “no reasonable prosecutor would bring criminal charges”. He also claimed that the FBI did not find any clear evidence of law violation. (Jackson, The Final Push)

His false claims also addressed the border situation and he claimed in November 2016 that the border was in the worst crisis ever. “You have been reading about it. It’s national emergency. It’s the worst it’s ever been, right now.” In reality, the total number of people who had tried to illegally enter the United States from Mexico and were apprehended was about 25 percent lower at that time than it was a decade ago. (Jackson)

Many people actually believed Donald Trump’s claims, even if they had been proven by reliable sources to be false. An example could be Mrs. Whitmire’s claim about Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi affair (see 3.3.1. Women voters) when she spoke about Hillary being corrupt and the same view was also shared by the Latino supporter of Donald Trump (see 3.3.2 Latino voters).

In the interview with Pavel Kasík which was mentioned earlier in this chapter he addressed another example of Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims. The statement aimed at Barrack Obama and one of Donald Trump’s supporters during Obama’s rally. Trump claimed that Obama verbally attacked his protester, when in reality the disruptor was Obama's supporter and Obama tried to calm him as well as his crowd. Obama actually spoke quite respectfully about the disruptor and defended him. The main Kasík’s argument, though, was that Donald Trump invited his supporters to check it in TV, but he relied on the fact that the people would not really go and check if he was telling the truth. (Kasík and Vokál, 3:30-7:00)

A study published in Journal of Economic Perspectives called “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election” by Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow deals with the prob- lematic of false news spreading. There were many completely fabricated stories circulat- ing during the 2016 presidential elections, such as a story about alleged murder of an FBI agent who was an alleged suspect in leaking of Hillary Clinton’s emails. This story was massively shared on the internet and originated on a website called denverguardian.com

which is no longer available. (Allcott and Gentzkow, Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election 213) Such news and reports, even though completely false, could be perceived as real stories especially on feeds on the social networks, such as Twitter or Facebook. (Allcott and Gentzkow 213)

Another well-known false story which circulated heavily during the campaign regarded Pope Francis. The story claimed that he had publicly endorsed Donald Trump in the presidential race. (Allcott and Gentzkow 213-214)

The study also described so called “close cousins” of false news, such as reporting mis- takes that were made unintentionally or stories that had no origin in any article of the news. This section of close-cousins involves also conspiracy theories, as well as satirical stories, as well as false statements made by politicians. (Allcott and Gentzkow 214)

As for the production of the Fake News, the study claims that many websites have been created solely for the purpose of false news spreading, such as previously mentioned denverguardian.com. The names of such websites often seem to be legitimate as they resem- ble the ones that are official and legitimate news outlets, such as the Guardian. Na- tionalReport.net, USAToday.com.co, or WashingtonPost.com.co figurated among the websites that had been created to spread false news. (Allcott and Gentzkow 217)

The problem of the fake news spreading during the 2016 presidential election was strik- ingly significant as the fabricated news number outperformed news reports by legitimate outlets as the election neared its end. According to Facebook monitoring data the fake stories were shared by more people than legitimate stories which were based on facts. (Price, Fake News Outperformed Real News)

The owner of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, argued that the power of fake news and its influence on the presidential election was almost none. “Personally, I think the idea that fake news - of which it’s a small amount of content - influenced the election is a pretty crazy idea.” (Parkinson, Click and elect)

News outlets such as Russia Today and Sputnik also spread false news during the 2016 presidential election and they also hired professional “trolls” - people who post “deliberately provocative message (…) with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument”. (“Troll”, Urban Dictionary) Such outlets and trolls spread positive comments of Donald Trump while contrasting Hillary Clinton in series of negative coverage and comments. (ODNI, Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 Presidential Elec- tion)

Russia Today, a propagandistic newsmagazine, kept portraying Donald Trump as a “vic- tim of corrupt political establishment”. RT tried to diminish Hillary Clinton’s electability in the eyes of the American public by focusing on the leaked emails and picturing her as being corrupt or being linked to Islamic extremism. (ODNI, Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 Presidential Election)

According to an article by Rachel Roberts for the Independent magazine the number of people that had been hired to spread Fake News to harm Hillary Clinton was over one thousand. Senator Mark Warner, a chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated that the trolls were located in a facility in Russia and that they were able to take over many computers called “botnets” which then generated news in desired areas. (R. Rob- erts, Russia hired 1,000 people)

Washington Post reporter Craig Timberg described the “botnets” in an interview for npr.org as “essentially computer programs that you can program to sort of tweet back and forth to each other”. (Shapiro, Russian Propaganda Helped Spread Fake News)

Mr. Timberg also stated that the storylines involved fake news about Hillary Clinton’s serious or even terminal illnesses or allegations that she had been involved in criminal activities while contrasting Donald Trump as a peace-maker. (Shapiro)

4.1.2. War with the media Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric was also characteristic by the “war” that he has been leading up until nowadays with the mainstream media, calling them “dishonest” and claiming that they were biased against him and spreading Fake News. “The media is so

dishonest. If I make a statement, they twist it and turn it to make it sound bad or foolish.” @realDonaldTrump, The media is so dishonest)

In an article by alternet.org there were mentioned Donald Trump’s completely fabricated claims about Muslim no-go zones in Paris in which even the police is afraid to go. The media covered this and wanted to set the record straight but at the same time they had labelled Donald Trump an “idiot” which, according to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, only emboldened Trump. (Rosenfeld, The Media’s Worst Impulses)

“I think the political press is among the most dishonest people that I have ever met, I have to tell you. I see the stories, and I see the way they’re couched.” (Diamond, Trump attack on the press)

Pavel Kasík also said in the interview for iDnes that Donald Trump was aware that the people who were most likely to support him held quite hostile views towards the mainstream media and that the American media who aimed at ultra-Republican audience were mostly spreading news labelled as “apocalypse”, “treason”, “corrupted politicians” among others. (Kasík and Vokál, 12.48-13:35)

Gallup conducted a survey in September 2016 to elicit information about the amount of trust of public towards the mass media.13 According to this survey only 32 percent of respondents claimed that they trusted the media reporting to be full, accurate and fair and it was the lowest number in the history of Gallup polling. (Swift, Americans’ Trust in Mass Media)

Swift argued that the trust of the American people dropping lower could have been influenced by the presidential campaign as many Republican leaders and conservative pundits stated that Hillary Clinton’s media attention had been overly positive, whereas Donald Trump’s media attention had been “unfair or negative”. The lowest number in 20 years, 14 percent of Republicans, had confidence in the mass media, in contrast to Democrats of which 51 percent expressed confidence in the mass media.14 (Swift)

13 See Figure 13 in the Appendix 14 See Figure 14 in the Appendix

Neal Gabler claimed in an article by Salon that a “civil war” erupted within the mainstream media between the business and the editorial side during the 2016 election, which was an indicator of the craving nature of media. In other words - Donald Trump’s media sold and that was why they gave Trump so much uncritical coverage. (Gabler, CNN’s Donald Trump disgrace)

Donald Trump targeted his harsh remarks aiming at the media during his campaign rallies. He complained that the media “never show” the crowds at his rallies. In reality, there was plenty of coverage of his rallies and the large crowds that had gathered there. Allison Graves explained this in the article by PolitiFact as the TV coverage mostly focused on the candidate speaking, but the crowds were shown as well. There were also articles and headlines by Washington Post, New York Times or Tampa Bay Times featured in the article to demonstrate that the press had indeed reported about sizes of the crowds at the rallies and photos of the crowds were provided as well. (Graves, Trump media doesn’t show his crowds)

Donald Trump invited his supporters at the rallies to express their anger toward the media or to even verbally attack the reporters at the rallies, as in Pennsylvania Trump rally in November 2016. Thousands of Trump’s supporters were described as “screaming at the news media” that had been gathered there. Donald Trump himself referred to them as “the dishonest people back there”. (Finnegan, Trump crowd shouts down media)

Katy Tur, a journalist for NBC News, has been an often target of Donald Trump’s verbal attacks after one her of NBC interviews with Trump. Mr. Trump claimed that the interview had been edited to make him look like a liar. “She is back there, little Katy,” said Trump during one of his rallies and pointed at Ms. Tur. She said that at the moment the whole crowd began roaring at her angrily. (Trump’s Road, PBS, 24:51-25.38)

Ms. Tur was one of many news reporters who were shouted at during Trump rallies. In October 2016 during a rally in Ohio Donald Trump accused “crooked” Hillary Clinton and mainstream media of fabricating “false accusations” about him groping women. He appealed to people's anger which resulted in riots among the supporters. (Mazza, Frenzied Trump Supporters)

At the end of May 2016 Donald Trump held a news conference at the Trump Tower and later he lashed out at the media again for being “unbelievably dishonest” and “disgusting” for the way that they have been treating him. He said that he had given a great amount of money to veteran charities and instead of the media acknowledging that they tried to ver- ify his contributions to the charities. (The Associated Press, Donald Trump’s War With the Media)

Donald Trump implied that he would take a revenge against the Washington Post for doing a critical coverage of him by “going after” Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon and an owner of the Washington Post. (Beinart, Hot at the Press) Trump threatened quite often to the media, especially those with negative coverage of him. “If I win…I’m going to open up our libel laws so when they write purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money.”(Beinart)

Olivia Becker, a reporter for Vice News, described a specific area for the reporters in Trump’s rallies where the journalists were not able to move or leave, while at the rallies of other candidates the press was free to move around and interview the people. (Beinart)

Mr. Trump accused CNN of turning off their cameras during his Pennsylvania rally in October 2016 and he stated that their reason for that was the fact that at the exact moment he was adressing CNN’s “shortcomings”. (Gold, Trump falsely claims CNN turned off camera)

Donald Trump also labelled the network as being a “disgrace”. In reality the CNN’s cameras were just turning on at that moment and they were preparing for live streaming, which was confirmed later in the raw feed from the rally and Katy Tur from NBC had also tweeted about it right from the rally. (Gold)

David Chavern, a CEO of the News Media Alliance, expressed concerns that the way that Donald Trump had been treating the media was not only offensive or rude anymore, but it became an endangerment of the Freedom of the Press and he also recalled Trump’s promises of loosening the libel laws were he to become the president. In addition, he

confirmed that Donald Trump had promised that he would go after reporters who would expose negative details about him. (Chavern, Trump’s Treatment of Media)

Donald Trump created a blacklist of media outlets that were not allowed entrance to his campaign events, including POLITICO, The Daily Beast, Buzzfeed or Huffington Post for taking offense over their coverage of him. (Chavern, Trump’s War on Media)

The Committee to Protect Journalists published a statement claiming that Donald Trump represented “unprecedented threat to the rights of journalists”. (Mazza)

Donald Trump’s war with the media also dates back to the 90’s when the tabloids were closely covering his scandals. Tony Schwartz claimed that Donald Trump loved the publicity, even when it was a very bad. He also stated that the people forget over a period of time the reason they disliked a person such as Donald Trump, but they remember their name. (President Trump, PBS, 31:06 - 33:22)

4.1.3. Social media - Twitter, Facebook Another very important elements in Donald Trump’s campaign was the use of social media, especially Twitter and Facebook.

Twitter is a social network defined as an “online microblogging service for distributing short messages among groups of recipients via personal or mobile telephone”. The short messages are called “Tweets” which can be seen by a list of other users which are referred to as followers. (The Editors of Encyclopædia Britanicca, Twitter) Users can “retweet” the posts on Twitter, meaning that they repost or forward the message. (Retweet, Oxford Dictionaries Posts on Twitter are often accompanied by hashtags, which can be defined as “a word or phrase preceded by the symbol # that classifies or categorizes the accom- panying word (such as tweet). (Hashtag, Merriam-Webster) Twitter also enables the users to express their fondness of posts by feature called “like” which are buttons represented by a small heart. (How to like a Tweet or Moment, Twitter help)

Facebook is also a social network founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 and enables the users to create profiles, upload photos and communicate with other users, as well as ad- vertise. The followers are called “friends” and the so called “likes” are signs of other

users’ approval of content shared on Facebook, the users are also able to comment and share the content according to their privacy settings. (Hall, Facebook)

Mr. Trump himself confirmed that Facebook and other social networks had been “a key elements” in his presidential victory. “I think that social media has more power than the money they spent.” (McCormick, Donald Trump Facebook and Twitter win)

A study conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed that 62 percent of adults in the United States were getting their news on social media and 18 percent of them claimed that they do so often in 2016.15 (Gottfried and Shearer, News Use Across Social Media)

The social networks such as Facebook, Google and Twitter faced criticism as they were a breeding ground of fake news spreading during the election, of which major part had targeted Clinton. (Scola et al, How Facebook, Google and Twitter embeds helped Trump)

The Pew Research found that 66 percent of Facebook users were getting their news directly on the site, 59 percent of Twitter users were obtaining their news on Twitter and 70 percent of Reddit users were getting their news there.16 (Gottfried and Shearer)

Donald Trump used his experience from show business as he had been well aware social media being a powerful source of direct contact with his audience. He used especially Twitter to “keep his name out there” and as a result there were hardly any news during the presidential election that would not feature his name. Trump’s social media team was outperforming Hillary Clinton’s team during the presidential campaign. (McDonald, How Donald Trump Used Social Media)

In 2012 presidential race Mitt Romney, who ran for the president, required 22 people to agree with a Tweet that he was about to post to his account. Donald Trump only needed one - Dan Scavino. Megyn Kelly, who was a Fox News host at the time, referred to Mr. Scavino as someone who targeted audience that “really enjoys nastiness and threats”. (O’Connor, Man Behind Donald Trump’s Bizarre Social Media Strategy)

15 See Figure 15 in the Appendix 16 See Figure 16 in the Appendix

The aim of Donald Trump’s social media strategy was to distinguish Donald Trump from the traditional media and to create tension between them. Trump used his Twitter account as his main communication platform where he was able to reach to his audience and communicate his unfiltered message, often to verbally attack anyone he felt threatened or offended by. Mr. Scavino claimed that Donald Trump himself was in charge of his Twit- ter account and that he dictated the tweets to Mr. Scavino or other members of the team during the working hours. In the evening the tweets were written directly by Trump. (O’Connor)

Donald Trump mastered Twitter like no other presidential candidate and used it as a tool to promote his political views and also attacks. In an article by the New York Times from October 2015, thus in the early stage of the presidential campaign, the number of mentions on Twitter in August and September 2015 combined was 6.3 million, compared to for example mentions of Marco Rubio or Carly Fiorina, Trump’s Republican rivals, who were mentioned 8 times less than Donald Trump. His Democratic opponent Hillary Clin- ton had 3 times less mentions on Twitter than Donald Trump at that time. His number followers at that time was 4.36 million which was similar to Clinton’s 4.39 million. Don- ald Trump also quoted a fan by referring to himself as being “the Ernest Hemingway of a hundred and forty characters”. (Barbaro, Pithy, Mean and Powerful)

In July 2016 Donald Trump’s number of Twitter followers was far different from the one from October 2015 with over 10 200 000, compared the one of Hillary Clinton with over 7 700 000. Donald Trump overperformed Hillary Trump in terms of retweets as his posts had been retweeted 12 million times and Hillary Clinton’s posts only 5.5 million times. As for the numbers of likes, he got 33 million and Clinton 12 million and his averages per tweet were 5 639, compared to Clinton’s averages with 2 154 by July 2016. (Lüfkens, Hillary Clinton v Donald Trump Twitter)

Donald Trump used hashtags far more than Hillary Clinton as he included hashtag in roughly one in two tweets as opposed to Clinton who used hashtags only with 14 percent

of her tweets. The most common hashtags of Trump were #Trump2016 and #MakeAm- ericaGreatAgain and Clinton usually used #DemDebate or #DemTownhall. (Lüfkens, M.)

An article by Forbes from July 2016 demonstrated the metrics of sentiment in the mentions of the two presidential candidates during the election with Trump having 8.9 percent positive, 62.25 percent of neutral and 28.84 percent of negative mentions of the total 28 131 mentions of his name on the social networks. Clinton had 7.8 percent positive, 69.46 neutral and 22.71 percent of negative mentions. According to these metrics the author suggests that Donald Trump had more polarizing effect on the people as he had more positive as well as negative mentions compared to Hillary Clinton. (DeMers, Don- ald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton)

According to another Forbes article Donald Trump had 10.2 million followers on Face- book, compared to Hillary Clinton’s 5.4 million in August 2016, Trump’s name was mentioned over 3 300 000 times and similarly Clinton’s name was mentioned over 3 100 000 times. (Arruda, Donald Trump Vs. Hillary Clinton Social Media)

In an article by the Guardian Brad Parscale, Donald Trump’s digital director, said that Facebook targeted advertising helped boosting Trump’s success immensely. According to Parscale Donald Trump’s presidential campaign spent significant amount of money on Facebook. They used the technique of micro-targeting of the voters as they have tested over 50 000 variations of adverts daily. Mr. Parscale also informed that Facebook provided employees for Donald Trump’s digital office, so called “embeds”, who trained Trump’s team in using targeted ads on Facebook. The embeds from Facebook had also been scrutinized in regard to their political views and Mr. Parscale only wanted Donald Trump supporters to train the staff. (Becket, Trump digital director)

Brad Parscale claimed that Facebook would also offer lists of registered voters and that the information about them would be accessed from public records. Such people’s profiles could then be found on Facebook. Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook, said that this has too often been a “standard practice” to help politicians maximize their campaign efforts. (Becket, Trump digital director)

Other networks, like Twitter and Google, helped Donald Trump’s digital campaign though their employees embedded into Trump’s team, according to a study by professors of communication from North Carolina and Utah University. These services were pro bono and had been offered to all the candidates of the 2016 presidential election, but Hillary Clinton’s campaign team declined this offer. (Scola et al)

During the third presidential debate Donald Trump’s Twitter and Facebook accounts was managed by Mr. Parscale and according to a Bloomberg article he had a dashboard with 400 Tweets on Trump’s account which had been prewritten and ready to be posted. (Green and Issenberg, Inside the Trump Bunker)

Important person in Donald Trump’s success via the social media was his son-in-law Jared Kushner. He has been friends with people in Silicon Valley, who have been among the best digital marketers in the world and their subcontractors along with people from other technology companies educated him in using the Facebook micro-targeting. In June 2016 Kushner built a data hub which combined fundraising as well as messaging and targeting and Mr. Kushner put Brad Parscale in charge of this hub. Jared Kushner lacked political experience and political campaigning in particular. Nevertheless, that proved to be his strong quality as was able to run the campaign untraditionally through the social networks as tool of spreading both Donald Trump’s messages and targeting potential voters. (Bertoni, Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House)

The team led by Jared Kushner was able to draw data from the Republican National Comittee data machine and along with hiring targeting partners such as Cambridge Ana- lytica they were able to find the most suitable parts of social platforms for their targeted advertising. The tools then identified for example TV shows popular among specific groups of voters and targeted the ads on them. The data operations determined everything in the campaign, from advertising to where the Trump rallies should be located. (Bertoni)

A senior member of Cambridge Analytica’s staff stated during a secretly recorded con- versation that the company had created an anti-Clinton campaign called “Defeat Crooked Hillary” that had been spread heavily across the social media platforms. The firm’s CEO also admitted several meetings with Donald Trump during the secretly recorded conver- sations. Cambridge Analytica’s head of data Alex Tyler claimed the following: “When

you think about the fact that Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 3m votes but won the Electoral College vote that’s down to the data and the research.” (Graham-Harrison and Cadwalladr, Cambridge Analytica Execs Boast)

5. Conclusion During little over a year of Donald Trump’s presidency America went through some significant changes. The economy seems to be strengthening and the number of people illegally crossing the border lowers, but the carbon dioxide emissions of the country has risen. In addition, student loan debt has risen by 47 billion dollars. Donald Trump still did not pursue an “overhaul bill” to replace Obamacare, but he had signed a tax bill to elim- inate “the penalty for not having insurance.” (Kurtzleben, Trump First Year)

As for the gun ownership controversy, the most significant changes began in February after mass shooting at a high school in Florida which has resulted in demands for strict changes in the US gun policy. Donald Trump's first step in the changes was the fact that signed an executive order to “ban bump-stock devices” and promised stricter background checks. (BBC News, Trump pushes for ban)

The findings offered in this thesis are applicable beyond the 2016 US presidential elections. The worldwide rising popularity of populistic leaders linked mostly to lower education levels of the voters whose decision-making is susceptible to vote based on their emotions rather than relying on objective facts and reason is seen in other elections as well.

Particularly in Czech Republic this year’s presidential elections have been addressed as victory of “right-wing populist” Milos Zeman. (Janicek, Czech election result)

Zeman, as well as Donald Trump, has built his rhetoric on anti-Muslim and anti-immigration rhetoric and “exploited widespread fear of migration among Czechs”. He also publicly endorsed Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election. (Janicek)

Lastly, the phenomenon of Fake News is on the rise as well and the attacks of the “trolls” are becoming very common. There are many fact checking websites, such as factcheck.org or Demagog.cz, but unfortunately as the findings in this thesis suggest, many people believe such websites to be biased. Many experts and high ranking politicians address the issue of “information warfare” or “hybrid war” as it has proven to be very successful tactic in manipulating public opinion.

Donald Trump himself continues to downplay this issue and he even held “Fake News Awards” in January 2018 to bash the media that provides critical coverage of his deeds.

The key to prevent success of false news might be the improvement of education with an emphasis on developing critical thinking as well as familiarizing the students with the events of the 20th century, but as the findings in this thesis suggested, education is only one of wide range of elements in one’s decision-making.

Appendix

List of figures Figure 1 - Democratic Advantage in Partisanship, by Race and Education, 1992-2016 Figure 2 - County demographics that mattered most in the election Figure 3 - Predicted Warmth toward Clinton and Trump by Level of Need for Cognition Figure 4 - Wide education gaps in 2016 preferences, among all voters and among whites Figure 5 - Voter turnout by education Figure 6 - Clinton and Trump voters sharply diverged on a seriousness of an array of problems Figure 7 - Voters’ expectations of Trump and Clinton presidency Figure 8 - Trump overperformance by drug, alcohol and suicide mortality rate quartile Figure 9 - Gender gap in vote choice: 1972-2016 Figure 10 - Clinton and Trump supporters about their respects for men and women Figure 11 - Exit polls results - voters of Trump and Clinton by race Figure 12 - Fake news confusion Figure 13 - Americans’ Trust in the Mass Media Figure 14 - Trust in Mass Media, by Party Figure 15 - News from social media Figure 16 - Use of social networks as news sources

Figure 1

Note : The graph presents the percent of respondents who identify with or lean to the Democratic Party, minus the percent who identify with or lean to the Republican Party. Positive numbers indicate a Democratic advantage. (Pew Research Center surveys through August 2016)

Source: https://www.voterstudygroup.org/assets/i/uploads/reports/Graphs-Charts/1108/fig- ure1_sides_e4aabc39aab12644609701bbacdff252.png

Figure 2 - County demographics that mattered most in the election

Note: These are the county demographics that mattered most in the election, according to an analysis using county ballot counts and Census records. They're scaled to their rel- ative importance, and split by statistical significance.

Source: McGill, Andrew. “America's Educational Divide Put Trump in the White Hou se.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 27 Nov. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/education-put-donald-trump-in-the-white-house/508703/

Figure 3 - Predicted Warmth toward Clinton and Trump by Level of Need for Cognition

Source: https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*dN3MtqqVS5-Eh595jCnDZw.jpeg

Figure 4

Source: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/09125718/FT_16.11.09_exitPolls_education.png

Figure 5

Source: http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/58250662691e8820038b61e9-1200/ while- polling-before-election-day-showed-that-voters-with-less-education-were- flock- ing-to-trump--which-shows-in-the-exit-polls--he-still-saw-a-good-amount- of-support-from-voters-with-higher-education.jpg

Figure 6

Source: http://www.people-press.org/2016/11/10/a-divided-and-pessimistic-electorate/1c/

Figure 7

Source: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/11/10125024/5.png

Figure 8

Source: Monnat, Shannon M. “Deaths of Despair and Support for Trump in the 2016 Presiden- tial Election.” Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology and Education, Penn- sylvania State University, 12 Apr. 2016, aese.psu.edu/directory/smm67/Election16.pdf.

Figure 9

Source: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/09125520/FT_16.11.09_exitPolls_gender.png

Figure 10

Source: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/10/27134736/4_2.png

Figure 11 - Exit polls results: voters of Trump and Clinton by race

Source: “2016 Election exit polls.” CNN, 23 Nov. 2016, www.edition.cnn.com/election/results/exit-polls.

Figure 12

Source: http://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing- confusion/pj_2016-12-15_fake-news_0-01/

Figure 13

Source: http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Produc- tion/Cms/POLL/dkvnto6zb0kw5c0shdj57q.png

Figure 14

Source: http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Produc- tion/Cms/POLL/_fnglfgxdee9m2vdnmh1ma.png

Figure 15

Source: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/05/PJ_2016.05.26_so- cial-media-and-news_0-01.png

Figure 16

Source: http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/05/PJ_2016.05.26_so- cial-media-and-news_0-02.png

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