N.Y. Times & Nate Silver Misled Americans

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania head to the Inaugural Parade reviewing stand from the White House in Washingtion, D.C., Jan. 20, 2017. Trump was sworn-in as the 45th president of the United States earlier in the day. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Patrick Kelley.

As Election Day began in 2016, the media narrative was one of imminent victory for Hillary Clinton. Nate Silver, who suggested Donald Trump had a 29% chance of victory was pilloried by his peers, but even he was misleading America on the businessman’s prospects of becoming president. As Debbie and I drove through most of the Eastern seaboard during election season, we were both stunned at the consistent support for Trump, and the complete lack of enthusiasm for Clinton in places which should have been her strongholds. We could only predict victory for Trump.

In National Review, Victor Davis Hanson explains a media and government all-in on a Hillary Clinton presidency. Their focus on Hillary as the next commander-in-chief blinded them to the reality of what was happening in America’s heartland. He writes:

On the eve of the election, the New York Times tracked various pollsters’ models that had assured readers that Trump’s odds of winning were respectively 15 percent, 8 percent, 2 percent, and less than 1 percent. Liberals howled heresy at fellow progressive poll guru Nate Silver shortly before the vote for daring to suggest that Trump had a 29 percent chance of winning the Electoral College.

Hillary Clinton herself was not worried about even the appearance of scandal caused by transmitting classified documents over a private home-brewed server, or enabling her husband to shake down foreign donations to their shared foundation, or destroying some 30,000 emails. Evidently, she instead reasoned that she was within months of becoming President Hillary Clinton and therefore, in her Clintonesque view of the presidency, exempt from all further criminal exposure. Would a President Clinton have allowed the FBI to reopen their strangely aborted Uranium One investigation; would the FBI have asked her whether she communicated over an unsecure server with the former president of the United States?