Election Forecasters Eat Their Words in ‘Trumped: Inside The Greatest Political Upset of All Time’

Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for president 577 days before Donald Trump declared victory in the 2016 race. Journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann and former candidate advisor Mark McKinnon spent much of that time embedded with the campaigns, last year hosting 26 episodes of their Showtime series, The Circus: Inside The Greatest Political Show on Earth. A mere 86 days after learning that Trump — a business man with no prior governing experience — would hold the most powerful political office in the world, the trio helped winnow down their interview and event footage to release the new Showtime documentary Trumped: Inside The Greatest Political Upset of All Time, which they executive produced and premiered at Sundance.

I so wish I could have watched the 102-minute film with no knowledge of the characters or outcome, unearthing Trumped as a historical relic of a bygone era. “I couldn’t help but think it was actually too soon for a movie like this because we all still vividly remember every beat of the plot,” wrote Boston-based Esquire writer Luke O’Neill last year about Patriots Day, the movie chronicling the aftermath of April 2013’s Boston Marathon bombing. The same could be said for Trumped; I felt numb throughout. Then again, if now’s not the right time to examine the origin of our country’s current leadership — as our new president issues a quick succession of executive orders prompting widespread protests — then when?

Trumped opens on the runway of Westchester County Airport at 3:45 a.m. It’s Election Day, and a large crowd has gathered to welcome home Clinton, who will cast a vote for herself as the first female president of the United States. She and her supports are buoyant. In hindsight, the moment is crushing, yet still remarkable to watch. I was reminded of the surprise I felt during an early scene in Michael Moore in TrumpLand, a documentary that the Oscar-winning director released with no notice three weeks before the election. Moore, an vocal liberal, travelled to a historically conservative Ohio town to engage in a dialogue with likely Trump voters. Once inside the venue, the audience is greeted by a stage full of enlarged photos of college-aged Clinton. In both films, we’re shown Clinton before Trump, though it is his name in the title. This artistic choice would likely irk our 45th president, so image-conscious that he goes to extremes to assert the size of his hands and crowds.

While the 2016 election cycle was protracted and painful for most, Trumped traverses it at a brisk clip, dividing the narrative into eight chapters (from “Chaos Candidate” to “The Reckoning”). The film’s primary action takes place between Trump’s June 2015 announcement and his first-ever meeting with Barack Obama, at the White House, as successor and predecessor (any reference to Trump’s role in galvanizing the Birther Movement has been omitted). As was the case with Patriots Day, no new concrete factual information is revealed in Trumped. Yet directors Banks Tarver, Ted Bourne, and Mary Roberston do get viewers a nose-on-window view of Trump’s inner sanctums, with brief interviews filmed inside his private plane, campaign headquarters, Mar-a-Lago resort, and Trump Tower residence lobby.

The film orbits continuously around Trump, even as his prospects seemed bleak following the Access Hollywood tape, allegations of sexual assault, and violence captured at his campaign rallies. “What an incredibly non-traditional campaign this was,” says Charlie Gibson in a clip from ABC’s election night coverage. “It was Donald Trump with a microphone, a hat, and an airplane,” to which George Stephanopoulos chimes in, “And a Twitter account.” Kellyanne Conway gets a couple quick scenes; Steve Bannon and Mike Pence do not speak on camera; Paul Ryan is a blip, as is John McCain. The Bernie Sanders movement gets no airtime — although Sanders does tell Heilemann on the subject of Trump, “I consider him to be a very dangerous human being who is doing enormous harm to this country” — and Tim Kaine is absent from the film (Alicia Machado does get a mention). For comparison’s sake, can you imagine telling the story of the 2008 presidential campaign without Sarah Palin? Not Halperin and Heilemann, either: they authored the book on which HBO’s 2012 film Game Change is based.

In a March appearance on Morning Joe not included in the documentary, Halperin stunned the panel by declaring Trump “one of the two most talented presidential candidates any of us have covered,” the other being Bill Clinton. Such talk earned the reporter this dressing down from MSNBC’s Brian Williams five days prior to the election: “I think you’ve gone out of your way to find the path, argue for the path, forge the path for him in an argumentative way with your co-host.” Trump supporters might appreciate Trumped as a filmic scrapbook of how they took control of the country from the Washington elite, though they will probably argue that too much time is devoted to their candidates’s missteps compared to Clinton’s emails and cronyism. In addition, they will likely reject the use of apocalyptic metaphors, and claim that the protestors met with brutality had incited it.

Trump comes across more gaffe-prone braggart than monster; Trumped makes the case that he did have a long game, whereas in real time, from my vantage, he seemed somewhat passive, propelled forward by the will of others. Clinton voters will find no joy in Trumped, just glimpses into what could have been. It brought back memories of ugly arguments with my loved ones and watching the returns alone, in a house that wasn’t mine, in a state that wasn’t mine, in a country that suddenly felt like it wasn’t mine (though I’ve barely left its borders).

Now that we’re just over two weeks into the Trump administration (where, in the words of U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, “For those that don’t have our back, we’re taking names”), in retrospect, Trumped provides two occasions of Republicans acting in gutsy defiance. The first is the party’s previous presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, holding a Utah press conference to lambast Trump in March; the second is Ted Cruz’s “vote your conscience” non-endorsement speech at the Republican National Convention in July, far from what those in the arena wanted to hear. However, two more events were left on Trumped‘s cutting room floor: Cruz’s eventual endorsement and MAGA phone banking, and Romney supplicating President-Elect Trump in an attempt to be made Secretary of State.

Trumped‘s biggest reveal comes near the end courtesy of Halperin, as he and Heilemann are en route to New York City’s Javits Center on election night, where they expect Clinton to emerge triumphant (and ready to unify) in a few short hours. “We’re in that classic bullshit where election returns — which suggest Trump’s doing even or well — and the exit poll data shows that Clinton’s won it,” he says. “Insiders know that and are basically, like, ‘Alright, whose going to be in the Clinton cabinet? And what time’s Clinton going to give her victory speech? And will Trump concede?’ And, you know, on the air it’s all just like kabuki of, ‘Oh, look, Trump’s up 7800 votes.'” Thus campaign obsessives with decades of firsthand experience were just as shocked as most Americans when Trump reached 270 electoral votes (it is unclear why the filmmakers decline to mention that nearly 2.9 million more citizens voted for Clinton than Trump). Williams might have thought Halperin went too easy on Trump, but that night, after Clinton loses Florida, he offered up this grim prediction on Stephen Colbert’s Showtime special: “Outside of the Civil War, World War II, and including 9/11, this may be the most cataclysmic event the country’s ever seen.” As such, documentary viewers are not forced sit through Trump’s victory or Clinton’s concession remarks.

From Sanders to to Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio to Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook, the secondary players in Trumped bemoan the media for not focusing enough on the actual campaign issues. The filmmakers acknowledge their multitude of available distractions with jump cuts comparing Trump rallies to music festivals and sporting events (there’s also the small fact their regular election coverage was dubbed The Circus). No member of the Showtime triumvirate voices regret about they did their jobs. Still, our one guarantee for the future is that they — and us — will be processing the outcome of November 8, 2016 each and every day.

Watch 'Trumped: Inside The Greatest Political Upset of All Time' on Showtime