The 2020 Democratic presidential candidates are battling it out in New Hampshire, competing in the first-in-the-nation primary for the opportunity to take on President Donald Trump in the November election.
But it was in the Granite State in 2016 that Trump saw his seemingly long-shot presidential campaign launched on a trajectory to win the Republican nomination and eventually the White House.
Fox Nation’s docuseries, “Proving Grounds: New Hampshire,” examines the role that the state has played in picking America’s presidents and re-visits the phenomenon that was the 2016 Trump campaign.
“A lot of supposedly smart people who know a lot about New Hampshire politics, like myself, were waiting for Donald Trump to falter,” New Hampshire University politics professor Danta Scala told Fox Nation.
“The primaries are designed to disrupt and they're designed to upset things. [Many in the Republican establishment] sat there dumbfounded on primary night and watched Donald Trump ignore all the party elites,” he recalled.
The Trump campaign arrived in New Hampshire after coming in second to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in the Iowa Republican caucuses. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida finished a close third.
“I’ve covered some crazy elections in my lifetime, but I think that the craziest thing I've ever seen was Donald Trump, who nobody gave a shot to,” said New Hampshire-based Fox News politics reporter Paul Steinhauser.
“He was drawing large crowds and not your traditional Republican crowds. Not that country club or business-Republican kind of crowd. We're talking about more populist, blue-collar, working-class crowd. And that told me that something was happening,” he remembered.
Another big story of the 2016 New Hampshire primary was the faltering campaign of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
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“Jeb had announced that he wanted to run a joyful campaign, and I think his timing was just bad," said John Sununu, former New Hampshire governor and White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush.
"Joyful campaigns might have been okay in the late 90s, but with folks like Donald Trump entering the fray, a joyful campaign was not going to cut it with the voters,” Sununu told Fox Nation.
In one moment that many in the media deemed cringe-worthy, Bush encouraged a New Hampshire campaign trail crowd to applaud as he delivered a stump speech.
“I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world,” said Bush to dead silence in a town hall meeting.
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“Please clap,” he asked sheepishly.
When the results of the first-in-the-nation primary came in, Trump was on top.
“Fox News can now project that Donald Trump will win the Republican presidential primary,” declared Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier on the night of the election, and the rest is history.
"Proving Grounds: New Hampshire" is available exclusively on Fox Nation.
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