November 8, 2016: The Untold Story of Breitbart’s Election Night, by Charlie Spiering.
November 8, 2016, was a historic day as President Donald Trump pulled off one of the biggest political upsets in political history. But many of the details were lost in the crazy development of the late-night and early morning hours.
We asked our Breitbart News staff, inspired by Esquire‘s behind the scenes look into the campaigns and some of the newsrooms, to share some of their election night memories with our readers. …
Joel Pollak, Senior Editor-at-Large: The first time I really thought — fleetingly — that Trump would win was at the “Midnight Special” speech in Virginia. It was Nov. 6, the Sunday before Election Day, and the speech was supposed to start at 9:30 pm. But Trump was running late, uncharacteristically. He had already been to five other states and held four rallies that day. I was traveling with the press pool and we arrived, finally, at 12:30 am, reaching the barn in Loudon County where the crowd was waiting. And wow! They were still waiting — thousands in the barn and perhaps thousands outside. Parents were in the crowd holding their sleepy kids on their shoulders, on a school night. When I asked them why they had come, they said: “To be part of history.” That’s when I texted my wife and told her that I thought Trump might actually do this. I was skeptical again by Election Day itself. But that was one of the little glimmering moments of hope for the Trump campaign. …
James Delingpole: In late summer of ’16, I got a frantic call from a journalist on Britain’s glossiest magazine, Tatler. He was trying to find someone, anyone, even halfway well-known in Britain who would admit to being a supporter of Donald Trump. Clearly, he must have been desperate because, apart from Canadian media mogul Conrad Black and Viscount Monckton, about the only one he could find to quote was me. I said: “I think he gets modern culture in a way a lot of people don’t. Trump and the age have coalesced. We have reached peak liberal-left stupid. Trump stamps all over that. If you believe the defining characteristic of our age is to virtue-signal, then Trump is the anti-virtue signaller.” …
Alex Marlow, Editor-in-Chief: Mrs. Dr. Marlow and I voted early at our Northwest Washington, D.C. polling place a couple weeks before the election. I remember waiting to cast our ballots in a seating area in the middle of a community center auditorium thinking that virtually everyone in the crowded room hated Trump, hated Breitbart, and was there to vote for the most corrupt person ever nominated for President by a major American political party, Hillary Clinton. I still couldn’t help smiling.
