Flashback: In a Divided America, the Road from Obama to Trump

It was 2012, and President Barack Obama was up for reelection. Anti-establishment anger was on the rise. Chasing the Republican presidential nomination, though, was a firmly establishment figure: Mitt Romney, an experienced politician, successful businessman and former governor.

As part two of FRONTLINE’s documentary series Divided States of America examined, there was a moment during Romney’s campaign that would later take on great significance: In February 2012, Romney accepted a controversial endorsement from Donald Trump, who had gained political prominence promulgating a conspiracy theory that America’s first Black president had not been born in the United States.

“For Trump, it was the Republican establishment saying, ‘You’re one of us, and we’ll stand on a stage with you,’” Tim O’Brien, author of TrumpNation, said in the documentary.

Alongside episode one, episode two of Divided States of America is now available to watch on YouTube for the first time as part of an effort to make FRONTLINE’s documentary archive widely available for streaming.

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From veteran filmmaker Michael Kirk and his team, the two-part series was first released as Trump prepared to take office in January 2017. It traced how clashes over politics, race and the economy revealed deeper divisions during Obama’s presidency and fueled a political insurgency, and examined the state of the polarized country that President Trump would go on to lead.

As episode two explores, in 2012, Obama — who had run for president four years earlier on a promise of hope and change and an optimistic message of unity and bipartisanship — was fighting to stay in office and took a different approach for his reelection campaign.

“I think you see President Obama with thicker skin, more jaundiced eyes, has grown more skeptical, even cynical perhaps, about Washington,” Peter Baker of The New York Times said in the film.

This time around, Obama emphasized differences as he made the case for his reelection. He said of congressional Republicans, “If I said the sky was blue, they said no! If I said there were fish in the sea, they said no! They figured, ‘If Obama fails, then we win.’”

“It was a grittier campaign,” said Dan Balz, of The Washington Post. “It was not a message of uplift in the same way, by any means, that the first campaign was.”

Obama’s victory stunned Republicans. The GOP’s loss would have a profound effect on one particular Republican: Donald Trump.

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Trump had traveled to Boston for a victory party for Romney that never happened. On his way back to New York City, Trump began posting on Twitter: “We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!”

Days after Romney’s defeat, Trump filed a trademark application for the phrase “Make America Great Again” and would begin laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign in 2016.

Roger Stone, who was a political adviser to Trump and said he spoke with Trump after the 2012 election, told FRONTLINE, “Romney’s body isn’t even cold yet, and he’s already handicapping this election. It was clear to me then he was going to run.”

With insights from congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle as well as Obama and Trump insiders, part two of Divided States of America goes on to trace the evolution of the Republican Party and the nation’s political road from Obama’s second term to Trump’s first.

“If you wanted the exact opposite of Barack Obama, it’s Donald Trump,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz told FRONTLINE.

“To embrace Donald Trump is a direct repudiation of the universe that Barack Obama set in order,” author Michael Eric Dyson said in the documentary.