It’s safe to say no one in the newsroom expected Tuesday’s election to turn out the way it did.
Donald Trump won the presidency of the United States with 279 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 228. However, Clinton did win the popular vote. 59,796,311 citizens found Clinton to be the most qualified to run our country compared to Trump’s 59,589,821.
Last night, several BG News staff members were up late helping contribute to election coverage. Some of us collected data from the polls, some attended local candidate watch parties and some sat on a panel on BG24’s election show.
Two minutes before the election show ended, we found that Trump won Ohio. Jaws dropped.
Our staff was shocked that Trump won Ohio, and we all knew it has been since John F. Kennedy that a Democrat has won the presidency without winning Ohio.
Hearts were heavy when results continued coming in, with Trump winning North Carolina and Florida, then finally Wisconsin pushing him passed his 270 electoral votes needed.
Watching these results come in, some saw America becoming great again and some saw their worst nightmares coming true. The result is thousands of speculations of what the next four years of the United States will hold.
We all saw it on social media: the threats to leave the country, the thoughts of the economy crashing and the steps backward from electing the first African American president to one endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.
Here are some potential outcomes predicted by large news organizations across the country:
Despite the hatred minority groups have felt from Trump, both President Obama and Clinton have announced Trump’s move toward a unified America. Regardless of the spats between Trump and Democrats, Obama is set on a peaceful transfer of power.
After his inauguration on Jan. 20, Trump will have to take great strides to fill the divide he has created among himself and a large portion of the population.
On the other hand, while many predicted a huge economic recession when it seemed Trump would win the election, the Dow flirted with lifetime highs Wednesday, rising 257 points, despite the 900 point drop late Tuesday night.
CNN Money reported that market strategists attribute the markets rejuvenation in part to Trump’s victory speech. They hope he will focus on strategies to help the economy and avoid some of the extreme promises he made in his campaign.
One such seemingly outrageous campaign position was to drastically lower all taxes, which economists said would raise our debt much more than Clinton’s plan of raising taxes, though neither’s plan would reduce our deficit.
Regardless, we did see a much more composed Trump during his victory speech than the one debating Clinton for the past few months.
A lot of people have also mentioned a fear that Planned Parenthood will lose its funding after fighting hard to keep it over the last few years. It is possible this will occur as now both the House and Senate are Republican majorities, the president elect is a Republican and Trump will be appointing one (likely Republican) Supreme Court judge (and possibly additional judges during his four year term with three being over 78 years old). Overall, all three branches of government are gaining a lot of conservative traction from this election.
It will be interesting to see the progression of President Trump. Many have said he’ll completely reverse his platforms. Many don’t want to stick around to see.
While we didn’t endorse a candidate this year, it’s true that most of the staff favored Hillary Clinton, whether that be genuine support or “the lesser of two evils.” Some staff did, however, support Donald Trump.
As far as media is concerned, our lack of endorsement this year was a result of an inherent bias in the newsroom that would most likely have prevented us from sitting down and actually talking about the ethics of our organization to come to a conclusion, since many identify with the “never Trump” motto.
We also disagree with the custom of news organizations endorsing candidates. As a staff we decided the objective of a news organization is to be objective, and endorsing a candidate defeated the unbiased news we intend to bring our audiences.
We’re interested to see how Trump will go about handling the media, as his response to most mainstream organizations during his candidacy wasn’t positive. He seems content on protecting the first amendment rights of American citizens, and we hope to see that respect continue over into media.
Though a lot is up in the air. One thing is true: Trump can no longer say he’s never been a politician.
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