The next time you see any of these people or media outlets profess to be experts, remember how horribly wrong they were...
22) Nate Silver
Nate Silver and his website fivethirtyeight.com pretty much got the 2016 election entirely wrong. He and his website repeatedly, week after week, tried to use numbers to declare Trump out of the running for the 2016 nomination, claiming he had a hard ceiling of 25%, 30%, and 40%.
Going into Election Day, Silver admitted that Trump was gaining on Clinton (which is more than many of his colleagues did). He also pegged Clinton at 75 percent odds of winning when the first polls on the east coast closed, which, again, was not nearly as bad as other pollsters.
Nate Silver is #22, however, because he admitted his bias and apologized for letting let his political opinions affect his predictions.
Lightning Round: Lesser Leftist Media Outlets/Websites (in no particular order)
21) Slate
20) Salon
19) USNews
18) New York Daily News
17) New York Post
https://twitter.com/nypost/status/622708763800260608
16) New Republic
15) Huffington Post
14) Mark Cuban
While Mark Cuban made a number of predictions throughout the primary and general election campaigns against a Trump victory, he isn't a political scientist or even a political commentator. So, we'll give him a pass on that one.
However, Cuban does proclaim himself to be an expert when it comes to making money and playing the markets, so his prediction that the stock market would crash if Trump won is fair game.
A year in and the stock exchange is at a record high. I wonder how much money Mark Cuban lost...
13) New York Times
At every turn, the New York Times underestimated Trump and his support and were convinced that Hillary Clinton would win in a landslide. This Tweet below was sent out by the NY Times on Election Day, touting that Hillary Clinton had a 92% chance of losing according to their models. What is amazing is that the same people who bungled that prediction are now continuing to try to turn the American people against Trump.
12) Washington Post
The Washington Post is even worse than the times because they actually ran a piece claiming that Trump's odds of winning the election were "approaching zero." How the Washington Post looked at data showing Trump down a few points in swing states and made them think the election was clinched is beyond me. But I think we all hope never to be so consumed by partisanship that we would make such an asinine prediction.
11) Late Night Comedians
Going to lump them all together since they aren't really important enough to be listed separately, but all somehow managed to get the 2016 election completely wrong. Here are three of the best late night comedy 2016 predictions.
Bill Maher laughing at Ann Coulter predicting Trump's victory
John Oliver begging Trump to run because he thinks he will lose badly.
10) The Young Turks
Don't know what The Young Turks is? Good, your life is better for not knowing.
The Young Turks (TYT) is a YouTube channel that features nothing but liberal hosts and commentators talking about Politics. Run by Cenk Uygur, the channel consistently swore up and down that a Clinton victory was inevitable.
"So what, they got the election wrong like every other mainstream media publication."
Yes, but what got them added to the list was their spectacular meltdown on election night, where over the course of hours, they went from praising unaffiliated voters (when exit polls looked good for Hillary) to condemning those same voters. One commentator even went so far as to say Election Day Trump voters "F*cking Suck."
Even if you don't know what The Young Turks is, you need to watch this meltdown video.
9) Newsweek
Say what you will about the rest of the pundits, pollsters, and commentators who were convinced of an impending Clinton victory. At least Newsweek was willing to put its money where its mouth was.
They accidentally shipped out copies of their "Madam President" edition before Clinton had won. Now, to be fair, they had another version mocked up for Trump as well. But it says a lot about their prediction that they were not only willing to ship the copies early, but also completely write an entire magazine about an election that hadn't happened yet.
8) Paul Krugman
Like Cuban, Paul Krugman also predicted that Trump would crash the markets. However, Krugman also went so far as to predict that the markets would "never recover" from Trump's victory. Krugman is much higher on our list of 2016 idiots because he has a PhD and still made this idiotic prediction the day after the election.
7) Rachel Maddow
Aside from actually dedicating a segment of her show to teaching viewers how to make an election victory cocktail, Maddow spent months spinning whatever data she could to proclaim that Trump's defeat was inevitable. Which is what made this election night meltdown so much more enjoyable.
6) Barack Obama
I really didn't want to include politicians on this list because even when a politician knows they are going to lose, they still need to put on a good face to rally their supporters. It was perfectly normal for Democrat politicians to come out and predict Clinton's victory.
But Obama went even farther. He went on Jimmy Kimmel's show and did the "Mean Tweets" segment, where he reads off everything bad people are saying about him.
When he got to Donald Trump's tweet, well... just watch for yourself.
5) Whoever was responsible for buying fireworks for the Clinton campaign
Not sure which paper pusher made this call, but they definitely deserve to make it onto the list. The Clinton campaign purchased $7 million of fireworks for their election night victory celebration. Not only did they have to cancel the firework display a few days before the election, but Donald Trump actually made the Clinton campaign an offer to buy the fireworks at pennies on the dollar.
4) Morning Joe
Throughout the primary campaign, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski gave Donald Trump some of the most favorable press and fairest interviews in the industry. That was, however, when they thought he had no chance of winning even the nomination.
As soon as Trump emerged as a lock for the GOP nomination, Mika and Joe turned on him, devoting whole hours to prognosticating his imminent demise.
Complete phonies.
3) George Soros
In addition to funding many of the Anti-Trump independent expenditure committees at work throughout the election, George Soros also invested heavily in the stock market for a Hillary Clinton victory. Weeks after the election, Soros' investments had already cost him an estimated $1 billion. So when you take those losses and factor all the money he spent on actively getting Hillary Clinton elected, while he didn't make a vocal prediction, he certainly made one with his wallet.
2) Practically Every Commentator at CNN
With the exception of a few, almost everyone on CNN's commentator and guest payroll had predicted Trump would lose. All of the hosts predicted Trump would lose. A month before the election, they had primetime hosts declaring the election was over.
CNN, in many ways, was like Morning Joe. They covered Trump's rallies when they thought he would lose because they craved the high ratings. But once he had secured a spot on the ticket, they went 24/7 negative against him. Which is what made watching the CNN hosts' faces on election night.
Hands-down worst response to the election night results came from CNN Commentator Van Jones, who accused Trump voters of executing a "whitelash" against minorities.
1) Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus
There has been a lot of reporting on what took place during the 2016 campaign, especially after the Trump tape was leaked. Paul Ryan not only denounced his support of Trump, but also called on him to drop out and for other Republicans to pull their support. Reince Priebus, who was the head of the RNC at the time, also privately urged Donald Trump to drop out and let Mike Pence take over.
Which is why they take the top spot. While almost everyone else on the list hated, or at best tolerated, Trump from the beginning, these two actually pretended to be his allies. They pretended to support him. And when the tape leaked, they stabbed him in the back, jumped ship, and urged him to quit. They would have rather had a Hillary Clinton presidency than risk letting Trump try to win.
HONORABLE MENTION
Hillary Clinton. Because this tweet was creepy as hell.Who should we add to the list? Let us know!
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