How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution Paperback – February 27, 2017

Did you trust the polls that said Clinton was leading by 12 points? Did you wonder if Trump was really confident or just putting on a brave face? This book gives insight into a campaign that was dishonestly covered by most of the media - including and especially by Fox News. The Trump win was truly revolutionary. A handful of amateur poll analysts (save 1) and an historian (Larry Schweikart) , connected by the modern equivalent of string and orange juice cans, saw what the media tried hard to hide, crunched the numbers more accurately than the high paid priests of bean counting and reassured the Trump team when gloom and doom propagandists went into overdrive.Breitbart's Joel Pollack provides color on the last days of the campaign as he traveled with the press corps covering the indefatigable Trump who, since he paid his own way, refused to play the compliant, apologetic doormat Republican candidate role.There's so much more to learn from this historic and revolutionary campaign and I hope both authors will follow up with a series of books about the heros and villians of this story. Pollack hints at but does not call to account the cultist and clueless press pack whose purpose was to report that Trump could do nothing right and Clinton could do no wrong. Schweikart tiptoes up to the events that led to the changing of Trump's campaign management - in each case at the right time with the right new people - but provides no "fly on the wall" war room insight. Although Pollack worked for Steve Bannon he gives away no secrets, either. How hard was it to convince Trump to use a teleprompter? What was the winning argument and whose argument prevailed? Kellyanne Conway was the polling expert winning campaign manager - was she on the deplorable merry band's circulation list or did she rely on other? What role did the Trump children have in the major decisions? What brought the group together and who was the glue that kept this over-worked group moving forward in the face of a hostile media, corrupt competitor and rejecting Republican party?The biggest question of the election for me: how many illegal votes did the democrats count on when added to the poll numbers? 40 years of dead voters and 8 years of uncontrolled illegal aliens surely were expected to provide a more than comfortable cushion in toss-up states. Even the democrats had to know they had a lousy candidate who couldn't turn out real voters.This election is truly one for the history books and this is one of the first books in that library. Well worth the read!

I just finished reading this fascinating book at 4:00A. I just couldn't stop as it got closer to the end. This is truly a book for political junkies. The reporter (from Breitbart) travelled with the Trump campaign and the other campaign reporters on the general election campaign trail.The historian talks about the pre-general election campaign (pre-primaries and primaries), data and the polling (fascinating). It's not about lefty/righty issues at all but more about behind-the-scenes stuff as it relates to processes and the Trump campaign.From the reporter you get the perspective of riding the press plane/bus, crowd and protestor comments, going from one location to another especially in the last week. Strategy, however, is what I found most interesting especially the polling trends (what the Trump data team saw in the data that lead to where they campaigned) and what Trump said to the crowds depending on where he campaigned). It mentions all of the scandals (Trump's and Clinton's) but not judging either one of them pro or con but only in regard to how Trump moved up and down in the polls because of the scandals. It talks about crowd sizes. It talks about reporting on election night. It talks about the ever-changing non-support/support Trump got from Republican elites/Never Trumpers. It talks about the news media on Election night and the debates (but not the content of the answers). It mentions how the 16 Republican opponents ran their campaigns, unsuccessfully.The writers assume Team Clinton saw the same data that Team Trump saw in their private polling. Was Team Clinton swayed by the public professional pollsters and media reporting?The only thing that may trouble some readers is the way the chapters are put together with the reporter writing one chapter and the historian writing the next one so you jump from one time period in the campaign to another. It didn't bother me.

I don't watch hardly any TV. Not in decades. So when Trump first appeared in the Primary I had no idea who he was. I heard the name before but I didn't know anything about him. And when I heard he'd been a democrat for 60 years I couldn't understand why he was running as a Republican. But no matter, I was a Cruz fan anyway so it didn't matter. When he won the Primaries I thought it would be nice to know more about The Donald but when I asked democrats about him (figuring they would know) all I got back was venom. He's one of them for 60 years and they have nothing good to say about the man? So I started thinking as much as the Left hates The Donald, he must be a good guy. And with the election being as screwy as it was, I ended up paying more attention to it than I ever thought I would. The book, How Trump Won, was great for helping me fill in the gaps of what was going on. To me the book mostly recaps the last month or so and does help explain a few things but what I found the most interesting was the campaign knowing the outcome of the election long before we did. In fact, where I thought The Donald was always going to be the winner, I was more surprised through it all that he was the underdog. The book is great in retelling the story and in my opinion doesn't come across heavily biased. It's more a chronological timeline of events. I think it's an excellent read.

A most displeasing book, totally biased and not very well written.

Could not put this down - superbly written - a great to reflect on such a triumph

A collaboration by a conservative academic and a Brietbart journalist, this book provides an enlightening counterpoint to the usual media accounts of Trump's rise to power.

Rehash of our road downhill

Excellent book detailing the inside story on the Trump victory