Hillary Clinton's terrifying final pitch: Imagine President Trump's first year in the White House

"Trump's Muslim ban goes into effect ... President Trump defaults on US debt ... US abandons NATO allies"

By Sophia Tesfaye

Senior Politics Editor

Published November 4, 2016 8:28PM (EDT)

Holy [expletive]!

If Donald Trump manages to convince enough voters in Florida, Ohio and some combination of New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Colorado that he is a reasonable enough candidate for commander-in-chief, then the entire world is in jeopardy.

At least that is the final argument the Hillary Clinton campaign is making in these last days before Election Day.

In a newly released campaign ad Friday, Clinton's campaign imagines the chaos set off by a Trump presidency. Using doctored images over actual television news coverage of Trump's 2016 campaign, the ad depicts what President Trump would do in his first year in office.

"Trump's Muslim ban goes into effect," a CNN banner from November 2017 reads.

"President Trump defaults on U.S. debt," reads another from October 2017, as the video rewinds back through a series of globally destabilizing events in 2017.

President Trump would abandon NATO allies allowing Russia to "run roughshod over" Eastern Europe in January, the ad warns. In March, he'd do nothing to stop Saudi Arabia from acquiring nuclear weapons before overseeing the largest series of deportation raids on immigrants.

The ad eventually rewinds all the way back to November 8, 2016 — Election Day — and replays the pronouncements of Trump's victory, before rewinding a bit more to end with a woman texting somebody to asking if the person had voted yet.

"Reality has no rewind," a narrator warns. "Vote":

The 47-second web ad, titled "Rewind," is clearly the Clinton campaign's play at fear mongering to ramp up GOTV efforts in the final days of the election.

The Huffington Post presidential forecast still gives Hillary Clinton a 98 percent chance of winning the presidency as of Friday afternoon.


By Sophia Tesfaye

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's senior editor for news and politics, and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

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