The 10 worst predictions after Trump’s first campaign launch

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UPDATED: Friday, June 20, 2025 01:59
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Friday, June 20, 2025 1:59 AM

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No. 10

“Thank you, Donald Trump, for making my last six weeks my best six weeks,” Jon Stewart snarked on the Daily Show after Trump’s now-infamous trip down the escalator at Trump Tower on June 16 of that year. The implication was that Trump would embarrass himself and that Stewart would have his punchlines easily written for him.

Stewart stepped down as the host of the Daily Show in August 2015 and wasn’t on the air when Trump toppled Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. His former colleague, Stephen Colbert, was, however. As Trump was declared the victor during a Showtime election night special that was supposed to be a celebration of Clinton’s victory, the comedian was visibly shaken.

“How did our politics get so poisonous?” Colbert asked without a hint of self-awareness. Over the next four years, he claimed that Russia hacked the election for Trump.


No. 9

“Can we stipulate for the purposes of this conversation that Donald Trump will never be president of the United States?” well-known plagiarist Mike Barnicle asked on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on June 17, 2015. “We just showed his lethal danger to the Republican Party.”

“Lethal danger to the Republican Party.” Trump led in many polls over the then-prohibitive favorite Jeb Bush less than one month after Barnicle’s comment.


No. 8

“Is Trump running to spite the reporters who mocked him as a bluffer? To use his political fame to trade up for his next wife? Does Trump actually believe he can become president of the United States?” New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait asked in an August 2015 piece subtly titled, “Donald Trump is going to lose because he’s crazy.”

Chait has never been very good on the prediction front. He supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and called 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign “brilliant” before Election Day.


No. 7

“Donald Trump will not be the 45th president of the United States,” James Fallows wrote in July 2015 in the Atlantic. “Nor the 46th, nor any other number you might name. The chance of his winning nomination and election is exactly zero.”

And in one of the least surprising things you’ll read, Fallows worked in President Jimmy Carter’s administration as chief speechwriter before becoming a “journalist.”


No. 6

“I do not hate Donald Trump, but I do not take him seriously. … Everything that was garish and ridiculous about him was fully on display,” John Heileman said in Bloomberg in June 2015. “Will it get him anywhere close to becoming the nominee or the President of the United States? I think not.”

Heileman signed with MSNBC during the Trump presidency to allow himself to become more unhinged, ironically calling Trump “unhinged, manic, unnerving, demented and deranged.”


No. 5

“Trump has a better chance of cameoing in another ‘Home Alone’ movie with Macaulay Culkin — or playing in the NBA Finals — than winning the Republican nomination,” pollster Harry Enten snarked for FiveThirtyEight at the time.

Trump captured the nomination easily before winning the presidency. Enten signed with CNN.

In our fourth spot, no horribly wrong predictions column would be complete without hearing from “conservative” Bill Kristol.


No. 4

Bill Kristol, Aug. 22, 2015: “Prediction: Biden will announce on September 7 after marching with cheering crowds in the annual Wilmington AFL-CIO Labor Day parade.”

Bill Kristol, Twitter, Oct. 5, 2015: “Isn’t the best window for @JoeBiden between the Dem debate (Oct 13) and Hillary’s Benghazi testimony (Oct 22)? I’m saying Biden announces Oct 19.”

Bill Kristol, Twitter, Oct. 16, 2015: “I continue to think Biden will run–and that he can beat Hillary.”

Bill Kristol, Twitter, Oct. 20, 2015: “Biden confirms to Obama at lunch today he’s running, announces at U Delaware tomorrow. You can feel the Joementum!”

Biden never ended up running despite Kristol’s reporting that he would announce on Oct. 21, 2015. And Kristol has

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