Derek Robertson is a news assistant for POLITICO Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @afternoondelete. Zack Stanton is digital editor of Politico Magazine. You can find him on Twitter at @zackstanton.

“This is exactly why Trump won.”

So began a recent tweet from New York Times political reporter Jeremy W. Peters, one in which you can feel the italics dripping off the word “exactly,” even though Twitter’s display doesn’t allow for them. Peters argued that the liberal news media helped to fuel the president’s grievance-driven rise by unfairly dismissing the importance of outrage bait like the micro-controversy over a restaurant owner who refused service to Sarah Huckabee Sanders.


Taking a personal opinion and retrofitting it onto Trump’s surprise electoral victory has become a social media cottage industry since Election Day 2016, so common that parodic “this is why Trump won” or “this is how we got Trump” tweets are almost as common as the genuine articles themselves. It’s sometimes hard to tell whether people actually think that, say, the New York Times’ guacamole-with-peas recipe literally led to the election of President Donald Trump, or if it’s just a joke, or it’s a joke with a grain of truth that illustrates how the Times is out of touch with mainstream Americans, and thus not really a joke after all.

Along with reportorial condescension and pea-based guac, here are just a few of the explanations that have been given by the Twitter Cooler since November 2016 for Why Donald Trump, the unlikeliest president in American history, Won. At least one of them is right.

MorningStar Farms’ Veggie Turducken sandwich

NRATV host and self-proclaimed “bacon whisperer” Cam Edwards, November 21, 2016

Encountering an Apple Store “genius” whose name is Kale

Federalist publisher Ben Domenech, Nov. 21, 2016

A satirical video game about former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott showed how “the left is too busy making video games about its enemies”

Sports reporter Vince Rugari, November 30, 2016

A BuzzFeed story critical of HGTV’s “Fixer Upper” stars Chip and Joanna Gaines for attending a church whose pastor opposes same-sex marriage sand supports conversion therapy

The Heritage Foundation’s Katrina Trinko, Nov. 30, 2016

Fashion designer Tom Ford’s belief that all men should be penetrated by another man at some point in their lives

DailyWire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro, Dec. 7, 2016

A man riding a bicycle while holding a GoPro on a selfie stick

Washington Post political reporter Dave Weigel, Dec. 14, 2016

A Twitter user pointing out a typo in a @realDonaldTrump tweet about China’s theft of U.S. intellectual property

Richard Grenell, Dec. 17, 2016

Grenell is now the U.S. ambassador to Germany.

Lena Dunham taking over Hillary Clinton’s Instagram account for a day

The Heartland Institute’s Jesse Hathaway, Dec. 22, 2016

Paul Ryan “dabbing” on CNN

FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver, Jan. 12, 2017

A Democratic strategist who tweeted “check your privilege” to Sen. Ben Sasse

The Washington Examiner’s T. Becket Adams, Jan. 13, 2017

Democrats proposing legislation to overturn Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban”

Sometime Fox News talking head Jessie Jane Duff, Jan. 30, 2017

Telling people they can’t say “this is why Trump won” is why Trump won

Federalist senior editor Mollie Hemingway, Jan. 30, 2017

People licking Nintendo Switch cartridges

Florida percussionist Kyle Foley, March 1, 2017

The opening of an “avocado bar” in Brooklyn

Guardian political reporter Ben Jacobs, April 3, 2017

Nordstrom selling jeans with fake mud on them for $425

Qatar-based Twitter influencer Hend Amry, April 25, 2017

Pro-LGBT demonstrators twerking outside the White House and Trump International Hotel

Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, April 29, 2017

Voters not seeing a difference between the Democratic and Republican Parties

Labor activist Nina Turner, May 20, 2017

Insisting that curry be spicy

Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins, June 12, 2017

Disneyland and Disney World reworking their “Pirates of the Caribbean” rides to eliminate the scene in which a woman is being auctioned off as property

Ben Shapiro, June 29, 2017

People being “too dumb to function”

Syfy’s Fangrrls managing editor Cher Martinetti, July 5, 2017

Americans spending more time alone or with co-workers than in the past

The Nation contributor Sean McElwee, July 8, 2017

Competitive hot-dog-eating champion Joey Chestnut entering and winning a taco-eating contest

Josh Barro, July 30, 2017

The Los Angeles City Council voting to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day (rather than the proposed alternative of “Diversity Day”)

New York Daily News opinion editor Josh Greenman, Aug. 30, 2017

Nintendo’s Mario ceasing to be a plumber

New Republic staff writer Jeet Heer, September 4, 2017

Critics complaining about Trump’s retweet of a gif that showed Trump hitting Hillary Clinton with a golf ball

Alt-right provocateur Mike Cernovich, Sept. 17, 2017

Tinder users refusing to swipe right on Daily Beast political reporter Gideon Resnick’s profile

Daily Beast political reporter Gideon Resnick, Sept. 19, 2017

Parker Brothers eliminating the iron as a game piece in new editions of “Monopoly”

Podcaster Merlin Mann, Sept. 29, 2017

The Washington Post’s coverage of Instagram star Dan Bilzerian after the Las Vegas massacre

New York Daily News columnist Brandon Friedman, October 3, 2017

Actress Brie Larson’s complaint about a flirtatious TSA agent

Comedian Tim Young, October 6, 2017

A “Rick and Morty” fan trading his car for McDonald’s Szechuan sauce

Mike Cernovich, October 12, 2017

The inability of Americans to pronounce “LaCroix” correctly

British journalist Joshua Zitser, October 28, 2017

A kindergartener voting along gender lines in a mock election

Illustrator and writer Rich Barrett, November 7, 2017

US Airways kicking out a passenger for a disruptive emotional-support pig

Josh Greenman, Nov. 15, 2017

Neil DeGrasse Tyson wishing “Happy Monday” to non-Christians on Christmas Day

Guardian “long read” editor Jonathan Shainin, December 25, 2017

A Vice article asserting that “Brooklyn barbecue” is “taking over the world”

Reason associate editor Robby Soave, March 4, 2018

A spurned bachelorette asking confrontational questions of ABC’s Bachelor

John Podhoretz, March 5, 2018

A pearl-clutching New Yorker story about a new Chick-fil-A opening in Manhattan

Nate Silver, Apr. 14, 2018

The New Yorker’s use of a diaeresis (commonly mistaken as an umlaut) to spell “reelection” as “reëlection”

Democratic pollster Will Jordann, May 12, 2018

White evangelicals’ opposition to refugee resettlement

ShareBlue senior writer Eric Boehlert, May 24, 2018

CNN giving Corey Lewandowski airtime

Ricochet editor and Jewish Daily Forward columnist Bethany Mandel, June 21, 2018

Muting the phrase “this is how we got Trump” on Twitter

Crooked Media editor-in-chief Brian Beutler, June 24, 2018

John Legend asking the Trump administration to reunite migrant families

Melbourne’s Herald Sun writer Rita Panahi, June 25, 2018

The New York Times’ cafeteria serving “beet reubens”

Politico Magazine editor-in-chief Blake Hounshell, March 20, 2017

