Tell the Truth 2016

After Donald Trump’s major upset victory in the presidential race, on Wednesday’s CBS This Morning, co-host Gayle King was perplexed by political analyst Frank Luntz explaining that Hillary Clinton “was actually not a good candidate.” She replied: “Did we hear that she was not a good candidate before last night?”

CNN’s Brian Stelter sent around an Election Day e-mail declaring “This is the year of the fact-checker.” He joked “Trump made fact-checking great again.” It's time to fact-check the fact checkers. In fact, it's already been done. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, just 29 percent of likely voters trust media fact-checking of the candidates, while 62 percent believed the media “skew the facts…

Minutes after President-Elect Donald Trump concluded his victory speech that ended on Wednesday around 3:00 a.m. Eastern, the cast of characters immediately demanded that Trump seek to “rectify” the tumbling stock market that could lead to an “economic collapse” similar to what Barack Obama inherited when he was inaugurated in 2009. 

A stunned Chris Matthews struggled to comprehend Hillary Clinton’s loss and the victory of Donald Trump on election night. On MSNBC, Matthews sputtered, “[Clinton] won every debate by all standards. Every debate.... She had the best ad campaign, the best ground game.” 

With Donald Trump defying the liberal media’s expectations and dismantling Hillary Clinton’s Rust Belt “firewall,” Stephen Colbert began to freak out live on The Late Show Tuesday evening. “You don't need to stand for me. You don’t need to chant my name, America doesn't have dictators… yet,” he quipped. Colbert chatted with the audience about how nice it is that the election was coming to an end…

ABC News journalist Martha Raddatz on election night struggled to not get emotional as the night got worse for Hillary Clinton. Speaking of Trump on foreign policy, her voice quivered, “I was also looking back [voice breaks] at an interview Tim Kaine gave. Tim Kaine has a son in the Marine Corps. He was asked, by John Dickerson, ‘So if Donald Trump is democratically elected, and your son is…

By midnight, things were not looking good in the Clinton camp. After their earlier expressions of panic and disbelief, many stars seemed to resign themselves to the probable outcome of a Trump presidency. 

The 2016 presidential election began breaking toward Republican Donald Trump as Tuesday night wore on into Wednesday and over on CBS, Slate columnist Jamelle Bouie repeatedly played the race card and even shamefully compared the surprise and repudiation of the establishment to racists and segregationists defeating Civil War Reconstruction. 

The celebrity freak out continued on election night as Trump did well all over the country. The liberal women of The View anchored live coverage on the Lifetime network. Actor and host D.L. Hughley appeared as a guest and sneered, “people are talking about leaving. My daddy survived Jim Crow, I can survive Donald Trump.” 

With Donald Trump doing significantly better than predicted in many states on election night, Daily Show host Trevor Noah opened his show by admitting he was “shitting his pants” over the results and by America’s “hate.” He also declared it the “end of the world.” Noah mourned, “It is election night, 11PM on the east coast. 8 out west and 9am tomorrow in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which is…

As Election Tuesday marched, the stability of Hillary Clinton’s Rust Belt “fire wall” defense was clearly in doubt. As Ohio fell to Trump, and Michigan and Wisconsin poised to do the same, CNN’s Jake Tapper admitted that the experts obviously missed something. “We still don't know what's going to happen in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, or New Hampshire,” he explained to his colleagues, “But…

Around 10 p.m., Hollywood stars began to panic. Hillary Clinton wasn’t as far ahead as they had expected her to be. In fact, the race was far from a landslide. Reflecting the anxiety of the Tinsel Town set, actress Mia Farrow re-tweeted a NYT poll showing that, as of 9:40 pm, Trump had a 55-percent chance of winning the election. As a comment on the tweet, she simply posted: “Xanax.” 

With the presidential election returns on Tuesday remaining close well past 10:00 p.m. Eastern, a few figures in the major broadcast networks began to take stock of the situation (with some not taking it as well as others) with NBC’s Tom Brokaw and Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd admitting that we may have “totally underestimated” and looked down on “rural America.” 

Just after the 9:00 p.m. Eastern hour on Election Night, Donald Trump remained ahead in Florida and it triggered CBS This Morning co-host and Obama family friend Gayle King into two brief freak-outs at the closeness of the election between Trump and Hillary Clinton.