In a 60 Minutes interview Sunday night, Donald Trump credited the success of his campaign to his following on social media.
“The fact that I have such power in terms of numbers with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. I think it helped me win all of these races where they’re spending much more money than I spent,” the president-elect told Leslie Stahl.
Trump’s campaign had hundreds of millions less than Clinton’s, and chose to spend a good portion of its money in nontraditional ways, like on hats. Throughout his campaign, Trump found himself at the center many, many social media scandals. For example:
Gawker tricking him into retweeting a Mussolini quote.
Manually retweeted an anti-Semitic Hillary meme.
Trump’s 3AM Twitter meltdown about Alicia Machado.
Trump’s insane old tweets resurfacing, which the New York Times published on its front page.
“I think that social media has more power than the money they spent,” Trump said. (It’s true. Hillary Clinton spent over a billion dollars on her campaign. 1.3 billion dollars can’t buy an election.) Seems like it’s a rare moment where the president-elect might actually be right.
This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012
