Playing The Trump Card Trivia Quiz

Answer: A disastrous televised debate performance

Even before the 2024 election campaign began, concerns had been expressed by some media outlets about Joe Biden's health in general, and specifically his cognitive condition. It was therefore met with surprise in some quarters when he announced that he intended to run for re-election, which would have made him far and away the oldest person to serve as president (if successful, he would have been 82 by the date of his inauguration).

All seemed to be going well, however, until the first televised debate with his opponent, Donald Trump, on 27 June 2024. During this, Biden was seen and heard to given rambling, sometimes incoherent answers, and to be unsure about the points he was trying to make. The following day, polling suggested that viewers felt that Trump had "won" most of the arguments, despite often going off on rants of his own, while Biden had seemed to be quite worryingly unsure of himself for much of the time.

At first, the Democratic party rallied round their candidate, but over the next few weeks it became clear that he had lost the faith of many normally staunchly Democratic areas. He was eventually persuaded that he had become a liability, and on July 21 he formally withdrew from the race.

Answer: Hubert Humphrey

Hubert Humphrey was the vice president under Lyndon B. Johnson, who had led the Democrats to a resounding victory at the 1964 election, having himself become president the previous year after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Johnson initially intended to stand for re-election in 1968, but unexpectedly withdrew his candidacy early in the year. Humphrey made the decision not to campaign in the primaries but focused instead on selection via the Democratic National Convention in August.

Many people felt this was somewhat underhanded, and there were some similar mutterings about Kamala Harris being automatically chosen as the Democratic candidate without voters having any say in the matter. Things ended badly for both of them: Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon, as Harris did to Trump.

Answer: Survived an assassination attempt

Donald Trump was addressing an open-air campaign rally when Thomas Crooks fired eight rounds at him from the roof of a nearby building. It appears that Trump moved his head at the last moment and the bullet only grazed his ear. However, tragically, another man, Corey Comperatore, was killed by the gunfire, and two others were seriously injured. The shooter was then killed by members of the US Secret Service sniper team who were there to protect Trump from this sort of thing.

A nearby photojournalist, Evan Vucci, took a series of pictures of Trump immediately after the assassination attempt. These showed him with blood on his cheek, surrounded by secret service agents, and with a defiant clenched fist raised while a United States flag waved in the background. This extraordinary image quickly went viral on social media and became an iconic image of the election campaign. Unsurprisingly, the whole incident gave Trump a boost in the polls.

Answer: Hulk Hogan

If the number and degree of fame of your celebrity fans actually made a difference, Kamala Harris would have romped home in the election. Beyonce, Swift, and Clooney are enormously successful and popular in their fields of endeavour (and rightly so), but it seems that voters don't necessarily make their electoral decisions based on what their favourite singer or actor thinks. Other celebrities who publicly voiced their support for Kamala included Madonna, LeBron James, Arnold Schwarzenegger (yes, really), Barbra Streisand, John Legend, Eminem, Billie Eilish, Bruce Springsteen, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Mark Hamill, Spike Lee, Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda and Jamie Lee Curtis.

The Donald, meanwhile, was supported by Hulk Hogan, Buzz Aldrin, Amber Rose, Dana White, Kid Rock, and several others who I hadn't heard of.

Answer: Elon Musk

As noted elsewhere in this quiz, most high-profile celebrity endorsements went to the Democrats. But the controversial South African/American billionaire, Elon Musk, somewhat surprisingly came out vigorously in support of Donald Trump, and made substantial financial donations to the Republican campaign. In August 2024, he and Trump spoke for two hours in a discussion broadcast live on Musk's "X" social media site.

Trump rewarded Musk by appointing him as joint leader (with Vivek Ramaswamey) of the proposed new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). How long this association will last remains to be seen - there is plenty of scope for these two single-minded men to fall out spectacularly.

Answer: McDonald's

Both candidates were keen to appeal to the so-called "working-class voters", and Kamala Harris mentioned several times on the campaign trail that she had once worked behind the counter at McDonald's.

Donald Trump, meanwhile, appeared to make fun of this claim by being photographed wearing a McDonald's apron and serving fries through a drive-through window.

Answer: Garbage truck

The whole "garbage" incident showed how quickly things can change on the campaign trail, sometimes helped by a quick-thinking electoral team. It all started on Monday October 28 (a mere nine days before the election date) when comedian Tom Hinchcliffe, performing at a Trump rally in New York, referred to the US territory of Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage". Although the Trump campaign quickly disowned the comment, it should have been a gift to the Harris camp.

Unfortunately, during a video call on Tuesday, Joe Biden then threw a spanner in the works by saying, while attempting to support Harris, "The only garbage I see floating out there is his [Trump's] supporters." The Trump campaign leapt on this remark and compared it to Hillary Clinton's use of the word "deplorables" in the 2016 campaign, thus putting Harris back on the defensive.

The next day, Trump's people then arranged for him to speak to reporters from a large garbage truck, which was branded with the Trump campaign logo, while wearing an orange high-vis vest. The image this presented of him was as a working-class kind of guy (whether accurate or not).

Answer: None

The voting patterns of most US states can be assessed reasonably accurately in advance, meaning campaigners reckon they can guess whether they will be won by the Democrats or Republicans. The states where the vote could go either way are described as "swing states", meaning the vote could "swing" one way or the other. Once these have been identified (and they vary from election to election), campaigners will tend to focus their attention strongly on them, because persuading undecided voters to go your way could be the difference between success and failure. It is often said therefore that just a very few voters can decide the result of a whole presidential campaign.

In 2024, the seven swing states were considered to be Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. Right up until the last day of campaigning, polls suggested that all seven could go either way. However, in the event on the day all seven swung to the right and were won by the Republicans.

Answer: 312

There were 538 electoral college votes up for grabs, so to win an actual majority 270 were needed. As final counting of the votes went on, Trump crept closer to the required number, and with the declaration of the state of Wisconsin at around 4:30am local time on Wednesday 6th November, he gained the necessary votes to reach that number.

In the end, he racked up a total of 312 votes, against 226 for Kamala Harris. He also won the so-called "popular vote" - meaning that more voters in total voted for him. It is possible for a president to win the most electoral votes while receiving fewer actual votes than their opponent, as happened to Trump in 2016. The Republicans also won a majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, giving them a clean sweep.

Answer: False

As many regular FunTrivia players will know, the first president to achieve this feat was Grover Cleveland (1837-1908).

Cleveland's two periods of office were 1885-1889 and 1893-1897, making him both the 22nd and 24th president. In between, Benjamin Harrison served as number 23.

Donald Trump served as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021, beating Hillary Clinton to the position. He was then in turn beaten by Joe Biden, who served from 2021 to 2025. Then in the 2024 election campaign Trump made a spectacular comeback to beat Kamala Harris and set himself up for four more years as number 47.

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