Although Hillary Clinton was only one month removed from the Department of State when America Rising opened for business in April 2013, America Rising’s main goal from day one was to provide the research to defeat her seemingly inevitable presidential bid. After forty-two months of persistent effort, America Rising realized that goal when Hillary Clinton was defeated by Donald Trump’s populist campaign.
What did America Rising do to help this happen? From the outset of its research, America Rising found that the top hits against Clinton generally portrayed her in three ways: (1) she was unethical; (2) she was untrustworthy; and (3) her record of performance was a failure. There were several high-profile scandals that accentuated Clinton’s weaknesses: the FBI investigation of her private email server, the tens of millions of dollars of dubious contributions to the Clinton Foundation, and the refusal to release transcripts of paid speeches. But toppling Clinton was no easy feat. Rather, it required an all-out effort from a team of researchers with a deep knowledge of Clinton’s life and career, as well as the skill and discipline to compile a research tome in excess of 5,000 pages.
Throughout the campaign cycle, America Rising’s research team watched every public appearance, monitored every debate, and pored over thousands of pages of emails, documents, and transcripts to chip away at Clinton’s perceived inevitability. America Rising took any and every opportunity to arm its clients to go on offense against Clinton’s flawed candidacy. This constant barrage kept the Clinton campaign on defense, as one Clinton confidante noted: “They spent their time protecting her, explaining her, defending her, with all these issues, the speeches, the Foundation, the emails — that became the energy of the campaign…” All of this helped drive Clinton’s record-high disapproval ratings as a candidate. In a change election, Clinton’s unethical character, lack of trust among voters, and failed record sealed her as the status-quo candidate, culminating in a stunning defeat.
