[Hypothesis] Mainstream Media Withheld the Election Results Temporarily | Why?
38 2016-11-09 by makedesign
The theory: The election results were known several hours before the media actually reported it. The media opted to withold their announcement as a single collective unit, effectively forming an information embargo.
Speculation: This delay would have allowed for the ambassadors and politicians of this country time to essentially prepare the country, world leaders, and markets for the impending announcement.
The delay may have also given the Clinton campaign time to look into any possible means of disputing (or changing) the results before they had been publicly called.
Finally, the delay may have allowed certain traders with inside knowledge to make moves on open or futures markets that would insulate them from the most dramatic impacts of the announcements... or even profit from it.
Outcome: The results were eventually confirmed around 3:30am EST with Trump as the winner... but in a closer election, it's possible that this sort of media-wide "embargo" on the results could be used to cover up all sorts of nefarious intentions - or even provide time to flip the results.
Author's Note: This conspiracy theory isn't sexy and it likely doesn't involve anyone going to jail or being murdered, but I think it merits recording on /r/conspiracy all the same as it may connected with larger conspiracies revealed later on. It certainly fits into the ongoing conspiracy (mostly proven IMO) that the DNC was colluding with the MSM on a regular basis to craft a pro-Clinton narrative.
Details: Last night (the night of the election), it was obvious early on that if you combined all of the "called" states from the different news agencies, Trump would have been named the winner very very early on in the night.
Specifically, different news agencies were making their official calls on states in different orders... in some cases Wisconsin was called early, in other cases states that should have been called by all mathematical probability models were NOT called until several hours had passed with them being marked at "99% reporting".
Contrast this with the primary elections, where even close races were called in Clinton's favor many times with only 50 or 60% reporting in much tighter races.
Instead, we had a steady stream of voting results and "projection announcements" stop virtually midstream and all media agencies essentially went into spin mode for several hours.
Plausible Explanation: The obvious explanation of this phenomena is that each news agencies was genuinely fearful of calling the race too early... so out of an abundance of caution, they all collectively waited until more data had been verified.
That's a perfectly valid response... but you'd still expect that one of the media-outlets would attempt to jump the gun and deliver the scoop of the century by calling the race early... instead, they all withheld the call as a uniform group.
I have no evidence that the delay was intentional and involved a cross-media conspiracy... but consider that Megan Kelly of FOX directly grilled their "decision room" manager several times to ask why it was taking so long to make the final call that would have announced Trump as president. Despite giving convincing reasons for their hesitation to call the race, if you flipped the channel or checked any other results, a different set of states had been called, which would have given Trump the 270 if FOX had included those other states (or vice versa).
More importantly, why would she bother grilling him to provide an answer if they weren't already worried about the outward appearance of the situation.
Summary / Additional Points of Interest:
1: Various news agencies had all called different sets of states by around midnight EST. FOX, for instance, had Trump's electoral count at 254 (including Wisconsin) while CNN, NYT, FiveThirtyEight and MSNBC all had slightly different numbers (and had not called Wisconsin). (If anyone can provide the exact numbers and timelines for each media-outlet, I'll include them - click here for ONE of the timelines of the calls that I could find).
2: A FOX commentator, at one point, even suggested that ambassadors needed time to make calls or something... this was around the same time that the general tone in the newsrooms switched from "what is Trump's path to victory" to "what is Clinton's path to victory". (if anyone has this clip, I'll include it)
3: Trump, in his "victory speech". His very first statement to the audience was:
Sorry to keep you waiting; complicated business; complicated.
But earlier in the night, Sean Hannity, who had spoken to Trump 3 times, sounded completely convinced that Trump had already won. So if he already knew the results, what was so complicated?
So that's all I've got. Anyone else have anything else to add to this theory?
Are there any other reasons that the media would want to hold an embargo on announcing the results that I'm missing?
Who would stand to gain the most out of such an embargo?
13 comments
14 The_Broncosfan 2016-11-09
Your theory is solid.... Plus you write well.
7 ArchonFall4All 2016-11-09
Thank you for this excellent write up. You articulated your points very well, and I definitely think you're on to something. I agree that something was brewing behind the scenes that wasn't shared with the public, and which was responsible for the hold up.
I saw some posts here yesterday (I think they linked to 4chan), which claimed that Wikileaks had proof of the DNC trying to rig the election. If this is true, then it could explain what was happening behind the scenes. Should the DNC, out of desperation, use their tools to swing the election? And if so, could they effectively combat whatever information might come from Wikileaks or other sources? In the end, it looks like they realized how much of a fight they would've had on their hands, and it was compounded by all of the other evidence showing collusion and corruption.
That's all I have to add to the discussion, but I'm interested to see other people's thoughts.
3 OneTwoWee000 2016-11-09
Yep! They were holding out on PA for a long time on FOX and other networks. I switched to online streaming of RT after awhile. Around 2:30am EST they mentioned the very unusual call by the AP to downgrade the amount precincts reporting from 98% to 89%, noting it's unheard of for the AP to be off by double digits. The talk was absentee ballot could swing it for Clinton but several minutes later the AP walked it back and announced with 99% of prescient reporting DJT had won the state..
None of that seemed right! It seems like the Clintons were trying to rig it but backed down.
2 jubale 2016-11-09
I think the democrats had secret marked ballots in several big ridings, and if they found a place that could swing it, they would push the cheat there. But they didn't want to overdo it, so they were delaying to see if they could pull off a swing.
5 Carlos_Dangers_wang 2016-11-09
We watched it unfold the same way, you are probably right on with everything you've said! Around 9:00pm PST it was obvious Trump won. We watched as Fox and CNN refused to concede Florida for quite a while.
6 makedesign 2016-11-09
Thanks for reading it!
The more I think about it, the more I'm liking the "insider trading" line of thought.
Considering how hard this hit the stock markets, and how much we already know about Podesta, the Clinton Foundation and thinly veiled insider trading, the more I begin to suspect that's part of what could have happened here.
I'm also recalling the moment that Trump came out and announced victory... 2 minutes prior to him walking out, all of the media agencies were still "undecided"... but the moment he walked out, FOX immediately called the race for him and CNN followed suit midway through his first statements.
It's almost as if they had all agreed to withhold the news till the AM, but Trump broke the embargo himself and they were scrambling to stay in front of his own proclamation of victory.
Note that FOX announced his victory first (they likely got tipped off by his campaign) and that CNN announced that Clinton had called first (they likely got tipped off by her campaign).
All of this last minute stuff happened in the span of seconds/minutes, so it's tough to really form any conclusions here... but I'll be damned if I won't speculate.
3 Carlos_Dangers_wang 2016-11-09
It was very fishy. We saw what you mean. They stopped trying to hide it the moment everyone called Wisconsin.
1 flyingcaveman 2016-11-09
I watched on NBC and Trump was giving his speech before they called it for him.
3 Agastopia 2016-11-09
But it was rigged so they knew ahead of time anyway...
3 goldenvoice5 2016-11-09
Also, once the west coast (California, Oregon, Washington, etc.) polls closed (it was around 11 where I was), they immediately gave the states, particularly California, to Clinton with only 28% of the votes in. They also didn't give a county by county breakdown of Cali until almost 2 hours later when more votes were in. For the other states, they gave them until at least 90% came in before calling it. They almost seemed desperate to change the narrative to her favor.
3 higherselfishness 2016-11-09
So, I'm not the only one who noticed PA going from 99% to 89%, and the absurd amount of delay before the race was called. The ordeal concerns me.
We were told Hillary called Trump to concede. This was shortly after the 99 - 89 - 99 ordeal. I. Seriously. Doubt he was showered with congratulatory phone calls because of his first statement: "Complicated business. Complicated."
These people are smart and the cabal has been in power for centuries and no one knows how far their reach is and honestly - his speech was NOT very celebratory. It was flat and he didn't seem... happy.
2 johnviku 2016-11-09
I think the key is in that word "complicated".
You need to add:
hillary'spodesta's non-concession.My theory: the global elites called trump. The PA counted vote % manipulation was their show of force that they could throw the election. And TRUMP made a deal with them.
Helps to have the greatest deal maker of all time in that position, but I'm still suspicious.
1 sundayatnoon 2016-11-09
I remember a suspiciously late call back in 2012 in Ohio. Republican pundits watched it much longer than was reasonable expecting certain areas to flip back. So waiting for a late night flip does have some precedent.
I'm very curious about what did happen, when was Trump briefed and all that. The concession was very late, I wonder if Clinton had an episode and was unavailable for notification at the time.