“How did you see it—this movement of the people that elected Donald Trump as president?” It’s a question I’m asked often, and the answer might lie in my past. I was a paperboy at eight, a dishwasher at twelve, a cook at thirteen, a busboy at fourteen, a waiter at fifteen, and a bartender at seventeen. Then I started painting houses, hanging wallpaper, laying tile, and framing roofs. That’s how I spent two decades of my life, and despite a long career as a prime-time host at Fox News and a syndicated radio host, I never lost touch with my blue-collar roots. It’s who I am at my core.
While CNN was already heralding the “passing of the torch” from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton the night before the election, I offered a reality check on the eve of Trump’s victory, saying this: “Now the liberal-loving Clinton media—the mainstream media—you know, the ones colluding with the campaign? They’ve declared this election over before your votes have even been cast or counted. Now they say it’s impossible for Donald Trump to win. I disagree. I don’t think they could be further from the truth.”
If the Destroy Trump Media had left the ivory tower echo chamber of Manhattan and DC and listened to the American people, maybe they would have seen it too. During Election 2016, I was on the road with these candidates—talking to the people, observing the crowds. You could feel this movement continually building behind President Trump. As the media lavished praise on the Obama presidency, I made a conscious decision to acknowledge the struggles of the people, not the so-called successes of a failed president. Every day I told my viewers about the 95 million Americans out of work, the 50 million in poverty, the 13 million on food stamps, and the fifty-one-year low in homeowners. These were the forgotten men and women whom President Trump spoke of. They are the story of Election 2016.
The plight of the people is something you rarely heard on CNN, and if you did, it was probably coming from my former intern and frequent guest on my Fox News show, Kayleigh McEnany. Kayleigh and her CNN coworker Jeffrey Lord were the two lone conservatives on CNN panels chock-full of liberal Democrats. Outnumbered 8-to-1 or, if she was lucky, 7-to-2, Kayleigh never backed down in fighting for the conservative movement supporting Donald Trump. My first Fox show, Hannity & Colmes, was her training ground as a young college student, which prepared her to fight for our president in the Destroy Trump Media. Now, my program Hannity is her welcome home after leaving CNN to become RNC spokesperson.
In The New American Revolution, Kayleigh puts a face on the struggles of the American people. These Americans—plagued by terrorism, criminal wrongdoing, economic hardship, and so much more—together formed the unstoppable movement of the people. Kayleigh traveled the country and profiled the lives of these Americans in moving detail—a mother in Lakeway, Texas, who lost her only child and husband to terrorism; a wife in McBee, South Carolina, whose husband died on an Obama-era VA waitlist; and a mother in Mineral Springs, Arkansas, whose son was killed in a tragic encounter with an illegal immigrant. You won’t find these stories in the mainstream media, but you will find them here in the pages ahead. Why did Donald Trump win the presidency? Well, it’s because of Americans like these, left behind by the federal government but resolutely determined to take their country back.
There’s a painting that says it better than words ever could. It’s a painting that I purchased called The Forgotten Man by Jon McNaughton. In it, a man in jeans, a flannel shirt, and a zip-down sweatshirt sits on a bench with his head cast down and his hands on his knees in apparent frustration. Behind him stands President Barack Obama with his foot on the Constitution, surrounded by the presidents who came before him. The White House glows in the far-off distance. Supposed to be America’s house, it is now inaccessible to the exasperated citizen planted on a secluded bench. The painting’s message is simple: Why are we not taking care of this guy who doesn’t have a job, who’s in poverty, who’s out of work? In The New American Revolution, Kayleigh tells his story, the story of the forgotten man and woman who Donald Trump promised would be forgotten no longer.