Trump Inaugurated: A Look Back At The Experts' Predictions

Chris Wallace, Fox News: "Let me ask you a couple of questions. How should Republicans handle Donald Trump?"

Karl Rove, Republican Strategist: "Ignore him. Look, he is completely off the base. . . . This guy is not a serious candidate."

-----Fox News, Sunday, June 21, 2015

"Jeb Bush, who might be president, and Donald Trump, who won't be president, competing for media oxygen, and well, it was a contest."

-----Howard Kurtz, host, Fox News' MediaBuzz, June 21, 2015

"Anyone who takes [Trump] seriously should really, really, really be ashamed."

-----Michelle Bernard, president of the Bernard Center for Women, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, June 23, 2015

"Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee. There's absolutely no way - his unfavorables are above 60%."

-----Lisa Booth, Republican Strategist, CNN's New Day, July 4, 2015

"Let's start with this: Donald Trump is not going to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2016."

-----Chris Cillizza, The Washington Post, July 12, 2015

"I don't think Donald Trump is going to be the nominee of the Republican Party."

-----Rich Galen, Republican strategist, CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, July 15, 2015

"Trump's support will probably fade. Or at least, given his high unfavorable ratings, it will plateau, and other candidates will surpass him as the rest of the field consolidates."

-----Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, July 20, 2015

"The Donald Trump candidacy is almost over. Don't be fooled by Trump's double-digit lead in a new poll:  He is not going to win . . . Donald Trump is not running a real campaign . . . Soon, the bolder members of the field will follow Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush in making harder and more decisive strokes against him. Unlike Trump, they'll use real oppo, tested and targeted messages - ads built not just to cut, but to kill. They'll break his operational tempo, get inside his OODA loop, and turn his circus into a crispy ruin. It's what real campaigns do."

-----Rick Wilson, Republican message and media strategist, Politico, July 22, 2015

"Trump's unfavorable ratings are extraordinarily high. So this is not a popular person. And people tend, in the end, to vote for people they like."

-----Gerald Seib, Washington bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal, CBS News' Face the Nation, July 26, 2015

"Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee, in almost - almost all certainty."

-----John Heilemann, co-managing editor of Bloomberg Politics, CBS News' Face the Nation, July 26, 2015

"At the end of the day, [Trump] is not going to be the Republican nominee."

-----Sara Fagen, Republican strategist and former political director for President George W. Bush, NBC News' Meet the Press, July 26, 2015

"I think Trump is not going to win the nomination."

-----Ron Fournier, senior political columnist for National Journal, NBC News' Meet the Press, July 26, 2015

John Brabender, Republican political Consultant: "Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee. I'm telling you that right now. But . . . ."

Don Lemon, Host:  "How do you say that?"

Brabender:  "He's just not going to be. My experience of doing this for 30 years. I'm just telling you he's not going to be the nominee."

-----CNN Tonight, August 3, 2015

"Donald Trump is doing well now, but I rather suspect the air will come out of that balloon at some point in time. I don't know when, I don't know how, but it's very difficult to imagine him being the Republican nominee for president."

-----Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, CNN's World Right Now with Hala Gorani, August 5, 2015

"Trump's campaign will fail by one means or another . . . . If you want absurd specificity, I recently estimated Trump's chance of becoming the GOP nominee at 2 percent."

-----Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, August 6, 2015

"Let me go on record saying this right now: Donald Trump will not be our next president. He won't even be the GOP nominee. And I know, I know: We've underestimated him before. But still."

-----Amber Phillips, The Washington Post, August 10, 2015

"Our emphatic prediction is simply that Trump will not win the nomination. It's not even clear that he's trying to do so."

-----Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight, August 11, 2015

"Virtually all the political prognosticators are united on one point: Donald Trump's surge is fascinating, but of course he won't be the Republican nominee."

-----Howard Kurtz, host Fox News' Media Buzz, August 6, 2015

"Whomever is going to be the eventual nominee . . . it's not going to be Donald Trump."

-----Robert George, editorial board member of the New York Daily News, MSNBC's Up with Steve Kornacki, August 16, 2015

"I do think that Trump will hit a ceiling . . . So, at the end of the day, I don't believe that Trump will be the nominee.

-----Mindy Finn, Republican political consultant, CNN Newsroom, August 18, 2015

"[Trump is] here to stay for a while, maybe through a few primaries. But he is not going to be the nominee . . . When the field narrows, he won't go very far."

-----Charlie Black, NBC News' Meet the Press, August 23, 2015

"Donald Trump, who is not going to be the nominee . . . "

-----Alex Castellanos, Republican presidential campaign veteran, NBC News' Meet the Press, August 23, 2015

"I'm going to show you Donald Trump will not be the nominee of the Republican Party!"

-----Adolfo Franco, Adolfo Franco, Republican strategist, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, August 28, 2015

"I am sure Donald Trump will not be our party nominee."

----- Adolfo Franco, MSNBC's Up with Steve Kornacki, August 30, 2015

""[It] won't happen, won't happen. I mean, Trump has . . . I think he's hit a ceiling of about 30 percent . . . We're at peak Trump. Of course, I said this about six weeks ago.  . . . Maybe peak Trump will last for another, two, three weeks, but I don't think so . . . . I do not believe [Trump] can be the nominee."

-----William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulus, September 6, 2015

"Last week's debate could mark the leveling off of Trump's rise and the beginning of his deflation."

 -----Thomas Fitzgerald, politics writer, The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 20, 2015

"He is getting boring. That's what destroys Trump.  . . I will be stunned if the next time you and I sit down at this table he still has the numbers that he has now."

-----Ian Bremmer, political scientist, PBS's Charlie Rose, September 22, 2015

"The entire commentariat is going to feel a little silly when Marco Rubio wins every Republican primary."

-----Ross Douthat, columnist for The New York Times, Twitter, September 25, 2015

“If you bother to read some of the serious analysis of Trump’s support, you realize that it’s a very fragile thing and highly unlikely to deliver what he needs in the crucial first phase of the primaries.”

-----Niall Ferguson, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, January 2016 [How the Davos Pundits Got it Wrong: President Clinton, Anyone?"Bloomberg Politics, January 15, 2017]

“By the time we get to March-April, it’s all over. I’m really looking forward to it: Trump’s humiliation. Bring it on.”

-----Niall Ferguson, at a 2016 panel co-hosted by Bloomberg.[How the Davos Pundits Got it Wrong: President Clinton, Anyone?"Bloomberg Politics, January 15, 2017]

 “It doesn’t matter who the Republicans put up. Hillary will win.”

-----Martin Sorrell, the chief executive officer of WPP Plc, January 2016 [How the Davos Pundits Got it Wrong: President Clinton, Anyone?"Bloomberg Politics, January 15, 2017]

"She [Clinton] has everything under control."

-----Michelle Goldberg, Slate, September 27, 2016

"Republican Donald Trump has essentially no path to an Electoral College victory."

-----Natalie Jackson, Senior Polling Editor, Huffington Post, November 7, 2016

"Hillary Rodham Clinton will become the first woman to win the presidency tomorrow, decisively defeating Donald Trump in no small part due to unprecedented Latino turnout."

-----Cliston Brown, The Observer, November 7, 2016

"Robert Reich: Don’t worry, Hillary Clinton will win the election Reich explains why there's no worry to worry (sic) about Tuesday night"

-----Don Hazen Alternet, November 8, 2016