Donald Trump’s historic election victory over Hillary Clinton was due in no small part to his relationship with Breitbart News Network.
Trump hired Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon as his general election campaign CEO as he stormed his way to 306 Electoral Votes and wins over Clinton in 30 and a half states, and regularly conducted interviews with Breitbart News over the course of the campaign.
For the anniversary of President Trump’s Nov. 8,2016, victory, Breitbart News has compiled a by-no-means-comprehensive list of some of the greatest hits from the campaign–including many key moments that led to what people are now calling “MAGA Day,” based of Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again.”
1.) August 2013: First Time Donald Trump Promised To Make America Great Again
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News while on his way to the early primary state–and swing state–of Iowa, way back in 2013, the now president of the United States tried out his now-proven-to-be-successful campaign slogan: “Make America Great Again.” While he used it a handful of times before this interview, including in an address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) earlier in 2013, it appears the slogan never got focal treatment until this August 2013 Breitbart News interview .
The headline on Breitbart News on August 10,2013, was: “Exclusive–Trump to Speak in Iowa: We Have to Make ‘America Great Again’”
In the interview, Trump stated that his “whole message always is making America great again.” He also discussed the idea that he was tired of other countries and foreign institutions driving the narrative while America wasn’t winning.
“They’re [the American people are] tired of being pushed around by OPEC. They’re tired of being pushed around by China and the other countries,” Trump said back then. “And you know, we’re like a laughing stock as a country. We’ve become just a punching bag for everybody else.”
Two years later, also in Iowa, Trump told Breitbart News he planned to Make America Great Again.
“I can make America great again,” Trump told Breitbart News radio for SiriusXM in Des Moines, Iowa, in January 2015
2.) Donald Trump v. BuzzFeed Blogger
What would be one of Trump’s first of many iconic battles with the media played out in a Breitbart News exclusive as well. After McKay Coppins, then of BuzzFeed–who incorrectly predicted in his hit piece profile on Trump that Trump would never run for president, and that his previous flirtations with doing so were all part of a show on the “fake” campaign trail–smeared Trump inaccurately, Breitbart News interviewed Trump and several of his Mar-a-Lago employees about the inaccurate piece, and Coppins’ foul behavior while there.
What transpired was perhaps the first mega battle between Trump and the political media, one of many to come.
“What a scumbag,” Trump famously said of Coppins.
3.) Carrier Corporation and the Jobs Drifting To Mexico, Overseas
Breitbart News was the first to ask the now president about Carrier Corporation, way back in February 2016 before he spoke about the matter with anyone else or in rallies. In response to the unbelievable video of a Carrier executive telling factory workers of the plans to shutter U. S. facilities in favor of reopening in Mexico in 2017, Breitbart News asked Trump about this and similar actions from Ford Motor Company.
“There’s only one way you’re going to reverse it, and that’s that you’re going to have to make it more expensive to do business that way,” Trump told Breitbart News . “First of all, you’re going to have to look to lower taxes [for those who do business inside the United States]—and we may very well have to charge taxes at the border, when somebody drives a car through the border to sell it in the United States. But look, we’ve closed our plants. We’ve lost our jobs. They’re no going to build cars in Mexico and sell them in the United States, okay? We can lower our taxes, and we’re probably going to have to charge a surtax at the border. Otherwise we’re going to lose a fortune. And that will help Ford and other people make a decision to buy in the United States, to build in the United States.”
Trump would go on to win the state of Indiana, shocking the political world which thought Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had it locked, in May. Then he selected the state’s governor, Mike Pence, as his running mate and hammered away at the trade issue day in and day out until his victory in November. After he won, before he even took office, Trump already negotiated a deal to keep a thousand Carrier jobs in the U. S.
4.) Donald Trump Pushing for Benghazi Accountability When Establishment GOP Did Not Want Select Committee
In January 2014, when then-House Speaker John Boehner and the rest of the GOP establishment in Washington was resisting efforts to hold Hillary Clinton accountable on the Benghazi scandal, President Trump–in another Breitbart News exclusive interview, where he called from New Hampshire–pushed for a select committee to investigate the scandal.
“I think that’s good,” Trump told Breitbart News back in January 2014 when asked if he thought there should be a select committee to investigate the Benghazi scandal. “It’s a good thing. It should be investigated. It was a catastrophic event. Certainly, they should get to the bottom of it.”
Boehner eventually, after months of pressure and a near-revolt from his own conference, installed a select committee to investigate the Benghazi scandal. Boehner would not too much later resign in disgrace from the Speakership and from Congress as conservative Republicans plotted a mutiny against him, with one of the grievances being his lack of leadership on oversight matters like this. But, of course, as was the case many times in the years leading up to President Trump’s historic election win, he was ahead of the curve politically.
5.) Donald Trump Called Barack Obama’s Failed Pacific Rim Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Deal ‘Pathetic’
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News right as he launched his presidential campaign in June 2015, Donald Trump slammed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal that Barack Obama had negotiated with several Pacific Rim countries as “pathetic”–and blasted the Obama administration for negotiating a deal that China wanted to join.
“Of course China wants to join the trade negotiation because the deal is so pathetic and so bad,” Trump said of the TPP deal in a Breitbart News exclusive published on June 19.
Here is more from that interview:
Of course, since he became President, one of Trump’s first official actions was withdrawing the United States from the failed TPP trade deal–undoing Obama’s mess.
6.) More on Trade from the Early Days of Donald Trump’s Political Rise
That, of course, was hardly the only time Trump talked with Breitbart News about trade policy.
In a May 2015 exclusive interview, before he launched his presidential campaign, Trump bashed the TPP to Breitbart News as an example of a failed negotiation. He specifically called out the failure by Obama to deal with China’s currency manipulation.
“I deal with foreign companies all the time. I do a lot of business with foreign companies and do well with foreign companies,” Trump said then. “The trade deal is a disaster for many reasons. Number one, we don’t have any good negotiators in our government. That’s possibly the single greatest reason—we don’t have our best and our brightest negotiating for us. That’s a real problem. Number two, and very, very importantly, it doesn’t take into consideration the currency manipulation because we get beaten in trade more by currency manipulation than any single other factor. So it’s not even discussed in the trade deal. They’re not addressing the number one cause of the unfairness which is the currency manipulation. China manipulates their currency so brilliantly and it’s very, very hard to compete. The other thing they do and they do it despite agreements is they make it impossible to sell product in their countries even after they sign an agreement so we need much stronger penalties if they continue to do that.”
In November 2015, Trump called TPP “insanity.”
“The deal is insanity,” he said. “That deal should not be supported and it should not be allowed to happen.”
He also, in that November 2015 interview, ripped Obamatrade’s 5,544-page length. “Nobody understands it,” Trump said.
“We are giving away what ultimately is going to be a back door for China,” he added then. “China will take advantage of it—all the weak points in it, more than anybody else.”
In February 2016, when Obama’s team actually inked the deal in New Zealand, Trump blasted it again in a Breitbart News interview.
“It’s like all deals that the United States makes under this president, it’s a terrible deal,” he said, reacting to the Obama administration’s finalization of the pact. “It’s going to allow countries to continue to take advantage of us and take our jobs, take our trade. It’s bad for us. It’ll allow China to come in through the back door at a later date and continue to really do a number on us, and it doesn’t take into account money manipulation—manipulation or devaluation of currency, which is the single biggest tool that countries use against us. It’s a terrible deal.”
7.) Managing America ‘May Be Easier Than Building a Business’
“In many ways, [managing] the country may be easier than building a business,” Trump told Breitbart News ahead of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Fox Business Channel debate in late 2015. “People know that and people understand that and they see that. For instance, I’m going to Illinois today and people are going to have like 16,000 to 18,000 people—it could be even more than that. They only knew about it a few days ago. We have 17,000 people already confirmed and we let them know about it a few days ago.”
Trump’s interview then came as he was towering over failed GOP establishment candidates in the polls in large part by touting his business experience. “I built a great company,” Trump said. “I built an incredible company. I don’t even get enough credit for the company I built, to be honest. The company is better than anybody even understands.”
When asked to react to why he was leading so big in the polls, Trump again touted his business experience.
“Because I’ve hired tens of thousands of people over the years, and because I’ve had a tremendously successful company,” he said. “My recent filing shows a huge company—a very huge company—with very little debt and tremendous cash flow when I filed down at the FEC. I have a tremendous company with very little debt and tremendous cash flow and some of the greatest real estate assets in the world. I think people see this. I think if I didn’t see that it would be different.”
In a later interview once he had the nomination wrapped up, in June 2016, Trump told Breitbart News that he planned to manage the country “with heart.”
“I think it will be great. I’ve always been a great manager, but the difference is you’re going to have to manage with heart,” Trump said. “When you run a country, you have to have more heart than when you manage a company. You have people that need help. You have people that are sick. You have people that need medical help and medical care. You have elderly. So it would be different in that way, whereas in a company you could be tougher in a certain area although the beautiful thing about the country is that there’s so much waste, fraud, abuse and fat.”
8.) Rare Jeb Bush Praise
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News in the spin room after the December 2015 GOP presidential debate in Las Vegas at the Venetian Resort and Casino, Trump praised former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush–who he beat up repeatedly on the campaign trail–for attacking him back finally in the debate. The rare praise for Bush showed Trump’s depth and skill as a politician, and he turned what should have been a positive for Bush finally into what looked like a last-ditch desperate effort to remain relevant.
“I think he did the right thing,” Trump said of Bush attacking him in that debate during his Breitbart News exclusive . “He’s getting clobbered in the polls. He’s trying to save his campaign. I think he did the right thing. And I would have done the exact same thing.”
That late 2015 debate exchange with Bush was one of the most iconic of the 2016 campaign, and Trump’s handling of it secured his slot atop the GOP field heading into the final weeks of campaigning before votes were cast in the early states. But that wasn’t all from Trump’s Las Vegas interview with Breitbart News. Here’s more:
But that was not the only major battle in that debate. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) duked it out on stage, too, something Trump elaborated on in his interview with Breitbart News in the spin room later:
9.) ‘Pack of Thieves’
One of the more interesting dynamics of the 2016 presidential campaign–especially in the primaries–was how some groups that normally align with the grassroots against the establishment threw in with the establishment against Trump. The Club for Growth, probably the most prominent such group, battled with Trump quite a bit during the primaries.
In a pair of 2015 Breitbart News exclusives, Trump blasted the Club for Growth harshly. In this one, in Tennessee, Trump blasted the organization as a “pack of thieves”:
Later, in this one, Trump blasted the Club for Growth for groveling for money then turning around and attacking him politically after he did not write a check:
10.) ‘Dishonorable Guy’ Karl Rove
After GOP establishment consultant and ex-George W. Bush White House aide Karl Rove bashed Trump in a Wall Street Journal op-ed just weeks before Trump secured the GOP nomination for president, Trump phoned Breitbart News to give us his thoughts on Rove’s dishonesty.
“This guy is such a dishonorable guy,” Trump said of Rove. “He shouldn’t be allowed to write for the Wall Street Journal .”
“Karl Rove writes articles and he quotes me with things I never said,” Trump added. “He actually makes up quotes and it is so disgraceful that he’s allowed to do it and he writes in the Wall Street Journal, which is a newspaper that totally misrepresents so much. Karl Rove — I’m just reading this — and he’s quoting me on things I’ve never said. He’s literally making up quotes.”
It’s hardly the first time Trump has ripped Rove for his incompetence and dishonesty and lack of integrity.
In a previous Breitbart News exclusive in July 2015, Trump bashed Rove for wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on Mitt Romney, the failed establishment Republican, in 2012.
“Karl Rove spent $430 million dollars on various campaigns last cycle. Didn’t win one. Which is pretty hard to do,” Trump said in that interview. “But Karl Rove spent $430 million dollars and didn’t win one race, and I think that’s pretty sad, and I can’t imagine how anybody would listen to him.”
11.) Tough on China
Trump spent much of the 2016 presidential campaign detailing how he planned to get tough on China.
“I’ve made a tremendous amount of money dealing with China,” Trump told Breitbart News in January 2016 when asked how he would handle the Chinese as President.
