Trumping Democracy

Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States by winning three key states, a victory engineered by an ultra-conservative faction that quietly mapped its way to power using fake news, lies, and psychometrics. This explosive documentary follows the money to the reclusive multi-billionaire Robert Mercer, who bought Breitbart News and funded the effort while inserting Steve Bannon into the presidential campaign as its manager. Using data on millions of Americans acquired from Facebook, Google, banks, credit companies, social security and more, Cambridge Analytica, another Mercer-owned company, used tactics honed during the UK’s Brexit campaign to identify voters deemed "most neurotic or worried," whom they believed could swing for Trump. In the days before the election, using "dark posts," a little-known Facebook feature, they deployed highly manipulative and personalized messages that could be seen only by the user before disappearing. In the darkness of the web, democracy was trumped by data. Experts include: Psychometric scientist Dr. Michal Kosinski, PhD Psychology (University of Cambridge); David Carroll, associate professor of media design at the School of Art, Media and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design; Rosie Gray, Whitehouse Correspondent, The Atlantic; and Brendan Fischer, Director, Federal & FEC Reform at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington, D.C.-based non-partisan nonprofit, that tracks campaign finance, government ethics and political transparency.