1 - Trump’s Arrival

Summary

Hillary Clinton had a thousand reasons to be upset by the 2016 presidential election. Her book, What Happened, lists them all. In Chapter 16 (helpfully entitled Why), Clinton lays out her reasons in 120 well-crafted paragraphs. FBI director James Comey is her star performer, far outdistancing Vladimir Putin & Co. Clinton also acknowledges her own shortcomings as a candidate and recounts other popular explanations for the election’s outcome – angry blue-collar workers in the Midwest, a disorganized Democratic Party, fear of immigrants swarming the southern border, etc.¹ What Happened is a conflicted book, as Clinton tries to explain “how sixty-two million people – many of whom agreed Trump was unfit for the job – could vote for a man so manifestly unqualified to be President.”²