Director's Statement

Thomas Huchon

This investigation really started with a hangover day in France. Not because we had drunk too much the night before, but because this morning of November 9, 2016, something was wrong.

During the night on the other side of the Atlantic, the impossible has become improbable, and had now become our new reality: Donald Trump was the 45th President of the United States.
I wanted to understand how that could have happened.

4%: The percentage of truthful statements made by Trump during the campaign.

How could a man who spends his time lying could be credible to millions of voters?

He incarnated a populist insurrection that had been brewing in America for several years, and had become their standard bearer as much as their interpreter. His fake news, which have long been taken for jokes of schoolboys, are in fact weapons of mass persuasion at the service of reactionary ideas.

100 million dollars: The amount invested by a billionaire for 10 years to place this man in the White House.

"I'm going to clean the backwater of politics" proclaimed Trump, as much to attack his opponent as to proclaim his own independence. He, the wealthy entrepreneur, did not fear "dark money" and the resulting corruption.

He appeared alone against all. Quickly, I realized that here too lived a lie. Behind Trump hid a billionaire. A secret man who has decided to impose, by means of millions of dollars, his reactionary and ultra conservative ideas. A man with the money to bring to the U.S. a machine able to win the election with algorithms.

77,000: The number of voters in 3 states (Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania) that allowed Trump to win the election while he has 3 million votes behind in the popular vote.

How to win when you lose an election?

2016 marked a changeover, which challenges the American institutions. Indeed, the advent of new technologies has allowed the development of new tools that allow candidates to target us without our knowledge. To make us switch in their favor, with messages that are directly intended for us, messages that are designed based on personal data that we leave behind on the internet.

If software can identify the voters who matter most, well, it's our entire system that goes out of date.

All this did not happen by chance. All this is the result of immense manipulation. A manipulation that opened the doors of the White House to Donald Trump.