From the moment Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the White House until very late on election night, media and pollsters kept insisting Trump wouldn’t—couldn’t—be president. But for Larry Schweikart—one of a ragtag group of amateur politicos called the “Deplorables,” who had been publishing shockingly accurate polls and predictions, and Joel Pollak, a senior editor at Breitbart News following Trump on the campaign trail—Trump’s 2016 win was a near certainty. Schweikart and Pollak watched the Trump campaign build a powerful coalition of working Americans from both parties; they saw the momentum that the mainstream media and pollsters completely missed; and now in How Trump Won they tell the whole incredible story, from the early poll predictions to the campaign trail and on to election night.
Joel Pollak is senior editor-at-large and in-house counsel at Breitbart News. Prior to joining Breitbart, Pollak was a Tea Party–backed Republican candidate for Congress in Illinois and a research fellow at the Hudson Institute, focusing on human rights and international law. Born in South Africa, Pollak became a US citizen in 1987. He holds law and bachelor’s degrees from Harvard and a master’s degree from the University of Cape Town. Pollak has authored several books, including Wacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea Party, The Kasrils Affair: Jews and Minority Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa, and Don’t Tell Me Words Don’t Matter: How Rhetoric Won the 2008 Presidential Election. He is a contributor to Canada’s Sun News Network, a frequent guest on Fox News and CNN, and lives with his wife and daughter in Santa Monica, California.
Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen are the coauthors of A Patriot’s History of the United States and have each written several books on American history and politics.