Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign in the context of Presidential nominee

Donald Trump's first tenure as the president of the United States began on January 20, 2017, when Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president, and ended on January 20, 2021.

Trump, a Republican from New York, took office after defeating the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Upon his inauguration, he became the first president in American history without prior public office or military background. Trump made an unprecedented number of false or misleading statements during his 2016 campaign and first presidency. Alongside Trump's first presidency, the Republican Party also held their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate during the 115th U.S. Congress following the 2016 elections, attained an overall federal government trifecta. His presidency ended following his defeat to former Democratic vice president Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Donald Trump's first tenure as the president of the United States began on January 20, 2017, when Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president, and ended on January 20, 2021.

Trump, a member of the Republican Party, took office after defeating the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Upon his inauguration, he became the first president in American history without prior public office or military background. Trump made an unprecedented number of false or misleading statements during his 2016 campaign and first presidency. Alongside Trump's first presidency, the Republican Party also held their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate during the 115th U.S. Congress following the 2016 elections, thereby attained an overall federal government trifecta. His presidency ended following his re-election defeat to the Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

During and between his terms as President of the United States, Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described Trump's lying as unprecedented in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods as a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found significant evidence of an intent to deceive.

Many news organizations initially resisted describing Trump's falsehoods as lies, but began to do so by June 2019. The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation. Steve Bannon, Trump's 2016 presidential campaign CEO and chief strategist during the first seven months of Trump's first presidency, said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit." In February 2025, a public relations CEO stated that the "flood the zone" tactic (also known as the firehose of falsehood) was designed to make sure no single action or event stands out above the rest by having them occur at a rapid pace, thus preventing the public from keeping up and preventing controversy or outrage over a specific action or event.

Sarah Elizabeth Huckabee Sanders (née Huckabee; born August 13, 1982) is an American politician serving as the 47th governor of Arkansas since 2023. Sanders is the daughter of Ambassador Mike Huckabee, who served from 1996 to 2007 as Arkansas's 44th governor. A member of the Republican Party, she was the 31st White House press secretary, serving under President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019. Sanders was the third woman to be White House press secretary. She also served as a senior advisor on Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. Sanders became the Republican nominee in the 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election and won, defeating Democratic nominee Chris Jones.

As press secretary, Sanders was the spokesperson for the first Trump administration's policy decisions, and had a confrontational relationship with the White House press corps. When interviewed by investigators as part of the Mueller probe, she admitted making false statements in her role. Sanders hosted fewer press conferences than any of the 13 previous White House press secretaries.

"Make America Great Again" (MAGA, US: /ˈmæɡə/) is an American political slogan most recently popularized by Donald Trump during his presidential campaigns in 2016, 2020, and 2024. "MAGA" is also used to refer to Trump's ideology, political base, or to an individual or group of individuals from within that base. The slogan became a pop culture phenomenon, seeing widespread use and spawning numerous variants in the arts, entertainment and politics, being used by both supporters and opponents of Trump's presidency and as the name of the super PAC Make America Great Again Inc.

Originally used by Ronald Reagan as a campaign slogan in his 1980 presidential campaign ("Let's Make America Great Again"), it has since been described as a loaded phrase. It has been described as a slogan representing American exceptionalism and promoting an idealistic or romanticized American past that excludes certain groups. Multiple scholars, journalists, and commentators have called the slogan racist, regarding it as dog-whistle politics and coded language.

Since 2025, Donald Trump has been the 47th and current president of the United States, having won the 2024 presidential election. He previously served a separate, non-consecutive term from 2017 to 2021 as the 45th president.

Trump has officially run as a candidate for president four times, in 2000, 2016, 2020, and 2024; he also unofficially campaigned in 2012 and mulled a run in 2004. He won the 2016 general election through the Electoral College while losing the popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 2.8 million votes, the largest margin ever to still win the presidency. He was thereby elected the 45th president of the United States on November 8, 2016, and inaugurated on January 20, 2017. He is the only American president to have no political or military service prior to his presidency. He unsuccessfully sought reelection in the 2020 presidential election, losing to Democratic nominee Joe Biden. After his first term, he was ranked by scholarly surveys as among the country's worst presidents. Among the American public, Trump's average 41 percent approval rating was the lowest of any president since Gallup began polling, and he left office with a 34 percent approval rating and 62 percent disapproval rating in his final polls.

Donald Trump's use of social media attracted worldwide attention since he joined Twitter in May 2009. Over nearly twelve years, Trump tweeted around 57,000 times, including about 8,000 times during the 2016 election campaign and over 25,000 times during his first presidency. The White House said the tweets should be considered official statements. When Twitter banned Trump from the platform in January 2021 during the final days of his first term, his handle @realDonaldTrump had over 88.9 million followers.

For most of Trump's first term, his account on Twitter, where he often posted controversial and false statements, remained unmoderated in the name of "public interest". Congress performed its own form of moderation: in July 2019, the House of Representatives voted mostly along party lines to censure him for "racist comments" he had tweeted. Following the censure, his tweets only accelerated. An investigation by The New York Times published in November 2019, found that, during his time in office to date, Trump had retweeted numerous conspiracy theories or fringe content.