{"id":22088,"date":"2026-01-09T11:30:31","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T16:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=22088"},"modified":"2026-01-09T12:09:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T17:09:48","slug":"2016-the-year-american-democracy-became-post-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/09\/2016-the-year-american-democracy-became-post-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"2016: The Year American Democracy Became \u201cPost-Truth\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2016: The Year American Democracy Became \u201cPost-Truth\u201d<\/strong><\/a>
<\/strong>by James Bovard<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was the 2016 election a turning point for American democracy? Did political shenanigans and the election destroy so much credibility and legitimacy that the system will never fully recover?<\/strong><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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In 2016, ignorant voters were reviled like never before.<\/strong> However, the entire political-media system floundered badly. Never before had American voters been obliged to choose between two such widely despised candidat<\/strong>es. A few months before the election, an Associated Press poll \u201cfound that 86 percent of Americans were angry or dissatisfied with the state of politics in the nation.\u201d Routine deceit by both candidates helped make \u201cpost-truth\u201d the Oxford English Dictionary\u2019s word of the year for 2016.<\/strong><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Many Americans were riled early on because one party preempted voters from selecting their preferred candidate. The Democratic Party leadership decided in 2015 or earlier to award its presidential nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; a large block of \u201csuper delegates\u201d chosen by party elites instead of voters helped ensure that result. In
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Republican nominee Donald Trump also produced plenty of scandals and outrages, including a leaked audio tape from 2005 boasting of pussy grabbing, inflammatory comments on illegal Mexican immigrants and a Mexican-American judge, and unsavory squabbling with a Venezuelan beauty queen who gained 60 pounds. Trump was also tarnished by allegations of improprieties or crimes by Trump University, the Trump Foundation, and some branches of his corporate empire.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Trump\u2019s rise provoked denunciations from poohbahs who considered themselves the public policy equivalent of Mt. Olympus.<\/strong> James Traub, an heir to the Bloomingdale fortune and a member of the Council for Foreign Relations, lashed out in an oped entitled, \u201cIt\u2019s Time for the Elites to Rise Up Against the Ignorant Masses.\u201d Traub declared that \u201cthe political schism of our time\u201d is \u201cnot about the left vs. the right; it\u2019s about the sane vs. the mindlessly angry.\u201d His solution: \u201cIt is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them.\u201d Traub asked: \u201cIs that \u2018elitist?\u2019 Maybe it is; maybe we have become so inclined to celebrate the authenticity of all personal conviction that it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history.\u201d And anyone who disagreed with Traub was automatically unfit to judge history.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Clinton\u2019s email scandal<\/strong><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The most politically damaging scandal of the 2016 race involved Clinton\u2019s emails as secretary of stat<\/strong>e. Federal law requires the government to preserve the emails of top officials, but Clinton evaded that mandate by setting up a private server in her own house. She violated federal law and regulations by handling top-secret information on an unsecure communications system. When a congressional committee subpoenaed her emails as part of an official investigation, she and her staffers deleted more than 30,000 messages. When she was asked if she had wiped clean her email server before turning information over to the FBI, she laughed, \u201cWhat? Like with a cloth or something? I don\u2019t know how it works digitally at all.\u201d In reality, Clinton operatives used powerful software to shred the hard drives beyond recognition while other aides used hammers to smash her cell phones to block investigators from reviving her records.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Clinton was the first major-party female presidential candidate in American history and her supporters were encouraged to view any criticism as an attack on all wo<\/strong>men. Robin Lakoff, a linguistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, raged in Time<\/em> magazine: \u201cEmailgate is a bitch hunt, but the target is not Hillary Clinton. It\u2019s us. It\u2019s not about emails; it\u2019s about public communication by a woman in general. Clinton is guilty of SWF (Speaking While Female).\u201d Washington Post<\/em> media critic columnist Margaret Sullivan bewailed the media\u2019s \u201cridiculous emphasis put on every development about Hillary Clinton\u2019s email practices.\u201d<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Media bias and hypocrisy<\/strong><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Some pro-Clinton journalists went to the ramparts to glorify government secrecy.<\/strong> Vox.com\u2019s Matt Yglesias attacked the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), declaring that it is \u201cfundamentally not in the public interest to routinely know\u201d the content of emails of high-ranking government officials. He proposed amending FOIA to exempt email almost across the board because \u201ceffective government beats transparent government.\u201d Mother Jones<\/em> editor Kevin Drum followed up with a piece calling for \u201cless transparency\u201d and stressing that \u201cHillary Clinton is a real object lesson in how FOIA can go wrong when it\u2019s weaponized.\u201d Actually, if the Obama administration had obeyed FOIA and disclosed Clinton\u2019s emails as secretary of state, the Democratic Party might have nominated a different candidate and won the 2016 election.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Other journalists asserted that truth itself can be a liability for democra<\/strong>cy. After she resigned as secretary of state, Clinton gave dozens of speeches to Wall Street banks and other interest groups, for which she received $21 million. Clinton refused to disclose the speech texts, but Wikileaks leaked them in early October. In one speech for which she was paid $240,000, Clinton defended political weaseling: \u201cYou need both a public and private position on certain issues.\u201d In a New York Times<\/em> oped, author Jonathan Rauch praised Hillary for her \u201cdisarming candor \u2014 including candor about lack of candor…. Hypocrisy and two-facedness … are a public good and a political necessity…. In our hearts, we know she\u2019s right.\u201d<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Clinton defended political weaseling.<\/strong><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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A month before the election, WikiLeaks began daily releases of more than 50,000 hacked emails from Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. Highlights included a 10-page analysis of the conflicts of interest behind \u201cBill Clinton Inc.\u201d by a top Clinton aide, an unsavory $1 million gift to Bill Clinton from the government of Qatar (who Hillary Clinton derided for financing ISIS in another email), ample \u201cpay to play\u201d kickbacks from aspiring political appointees, machinations on evading government investigations of Hillary\u2019s emails, and advance disclosures of questions for Hillary in upcoming debates from a CNN bigwig.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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The media had no qualms about heavily publicizing the tax returns of Donald Trump, which had been illegally provided to the New York Time<\/em>s. (Trump had reneged on promises to disclose the returns.) But as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a liberal media watchdog, noted, \u201cnothing to see here\u201d was the verdict issued by many pundits on WikiLeaks. Zeynep Tufekci, a University of North Carolina professor and a New York Times <\/em>contributing opinion writer, denounced WikiLeaks and claimed its \u201ctrue target is the health of our democracy.\u201d Tufekci asserted that \u201cobsessively reporting\u201d about the Podesta disclosures was \u201cnot responsible journalism.\u201d CNN host Chris Cuomo even implied that citizens risked prison time if they downloaded the leaked emails. He told viewers that \u201cit\u2019s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It\u2019s different for the media, so everything you\u2019re learning about this, you\u2019re learning from us.\u201d Some Republicans joined the suppression campaign. Sen. Marco Rubio<\/strong> (R-Fla.) declared, \u201cI will not discuss any issue that has become public solely on the basis of WikiLeaks…. I want to warn my fellow Republicans who may want to capitalize politically on these leaks:
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Journalists were told they had a sacred duty to slant the ne<\/strong>ws. A Washington Post <\/em>editorial warned that \u201cDonald Trump is a unique threat to American democracy…. The Republican Party has moved the lunatic fringe onto center stage.\u201d Vox<\/em> editor Emmett Rensin urged readers to take to the streets: \u201cIf Trump comes to your town, start a riot. Let\u2019s be clear: It\u2019s never a shame to storm the barricades set up around a fascist.\u201d In October, Washington Post<\/em> columnist Dana Milbank denounced the \u201clapdogs of the media.\u201d But the lapdogs were not those journalists and pundits who cheered the Clinton campaign. Instead, the \u201clap dogs\u201d were any journalist who failed to attack Trump as vehemently as Milbank thought he deserved. Milbank declared that \u201cit is absolutely appropriate to \u2018take sides\u2019 in a contest between democracy and its alternative.\u201d Wikileaks revealed that Milbank had earlier contacted the Democratic National Committee for assistance on a Passover-themed piece on the \u201cTen Plagues of Trump.\u201d Most of the quotes Milbank used to attack Trump were provided by the DNC. Wikileaks disclosed many other messages from journalists kowtowing to the Clinton campaign.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Disdain of voters<\/strong><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Voters were sometimes openly disdained. At a
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After the election, public-radio icon Garrison Keillor vented in the Washington Post<\/em> that \u201craw ego and proud illiteracy have won out…. Resentment is no excuse for baldfaced stupidity.\u201d New York Times<\/em> columnist Roxane Gay wailed, \u201cI thought there were more Americans who believe in progress and equality than there were Americans who were racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic.\u201d Georgetown University professor Jason Brennan scoffed: \u201cDonald Trump always enjoyed massive support from uneducated, low-information white people….
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Actually, a New Republic<\/em> analysis shortly after the election pointed out that Clinton lost because she failed to garner a majority of white college-educated voters. Many commentators could not concede that citizens had ample reasons to despise and vote against both major-party candidates.<\/strong><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Post-election laments<\/strong><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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After the 2016 election, protestors demanded that Trump be denied the presidency because he failed the newly discovered \u201cprogressive rhetoric legitimacy test\u201d that annulled 60 million ballots<\/strong>. In Richmond, Virginia, one protestor painted \u201cYour vote was a hate crime\u201d on a prominent statue. In Portland, Oregon, protestors rioted, looting and smashing storefronts and cars. Activists disclosed the home addresses of Electoral College electors, who were bombarded with death threats warning them to vote for Clinton instead of Trump. More than four million people signed an online petition demanding that the Electoral College effectively overturn the election because Trump was \u201cunfit to serve.\u201d<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Almost all the antics that occurred after the 2016 election vanished into a memory hole after the
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Ironically, while the media and many politicians were busy sneering at voters, the FBI and the Clinton campaign carried out one of the most brazen illegal schemes in American political history.<\/strong> In 2023, Special Counsel John Durham released a 316-page report detailing how Clinton and the FBI connived to rig the 2016 election. But that topic will need to wait for a later issue.<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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James Bovard is a policy advisor to The Future of Freedom Foundation and is the author of the ebook <\/em>Freedom Frauds: Hard Lessons in American Liberty<\/a>, published by FFF, his new book,<\/em> Last Rights: The Death of American Liberty, and nine other books.<\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2016: The Year American Democracy Became \u201cPost-Truth\u201dby James Bovard Was the 2016 election a turning point for American democracy? Did political shenanigans and the election destroy so much credibility and legitimacy that the system will never fully recover?   In 2016, ignorant voters were reviled like never before. However, the entire political-media system floundered badly. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,3491,52,4738,356,4737,47,815,4736,1982,264,4509,708,285],"class_list":["post-22088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coverup","tag-dana-milbank","tag-democracy","tag-deplorables","tag-elections","tag-emails","tag-fbi","tag-foia","tag-hillary-cinton","tag-john-podesta","tag-lies","tag-marco-rubio","tag-trump","tag-wikileaks"],"yoast_head":"\n2016: The Year American Democracy Became \u201cPost-Truth\u201d - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/09\/2016-the-year-american-democracy-became-post-truth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2016: The Year American Democracy Became \u201cPost-Truth\u201d - James Bovard\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"2016: The Year American Democracy Became \u201cPost-Truth\u201dby James Bovard Was the 2016 election a turning point for American democracy? 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.\",\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/www.jimbovard.com\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/jim.bovard\",\"https:\\\/\\\/x.com\\\/jimbovard\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/jimbovard.com\\\/blog\\\/author\\\/admin\\\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"2016: The Year American Democracy Became \u201cPost-Truth\u201d - James Bovard","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/09\/2016-the-year-american-democracy-became-post-truth\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"2016: The Year American Democracy Became \u201cPost-Truth\u201d - James Bovard","og_description":"2016: The Year American Democracy Became \u201cPost-Truth\u201dby James Bovard Was the 2016 election a turning point for American democracy? Did political shenanigans and the election destroy so much credibility and legitimacy that the system will never fully recover?   In 2016, ignorant voters were reviled like never before. However, the entire political-media system floundered badly. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22088"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22215,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22088\/revisions\/22215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}