You could certainly argue that politicians like Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush should be experienced in dealing with slip ups and potential pitfalls in an election. Especially when you consider the examples we’ve looked at above - Hillary had encountered domain trouble over a decade ago and Jeb must have been aware of the expensive slip up his brother’s team of representatives made in allowing their library foundation domain to expire in 2008. Yet in this long, fierce, and emotional US election campaign, these two political professionals and presidential candidates were undone by a classic domain grabbing candidate by a newcomer to politics: Donald J Trump.
Republican candidate Jeb Bush registered the domain jeb2016.com as his official homepage for the election, but failed to notice that the address jebbush.com was still up for grabs. Billionaire businessman and new Republican candidate for presidency Donald Trump spotted this mishap and took full advantage, registering the domain with a forwarding address to his own website. He ‘trumped’ Democrats candidate Hillary Clinton in a similar fashion, with hillaryclinton.net another redirecting page to Trump’s presidential campaign site. And they’re not the only two – typing presidentsanders.com, a potential domain for Democrats candidate Bernie Sanders, into your browser’s task bar will also give you exactly the same result.
Of course, Trump wasn’t foolish enough to fall for his own tricks. The Republican nominee took the time to register thousands of domains that have even the slightest connection to his name or the name of his wife Ivanka, ranging from the routine to the quite bizarre. A list of around 3,200 domain names is in circulation in total – many of which are connected to Mr. Trump’s numerous business activities already in existence, while others offer a little wink and a nod towards what Trump may be planning in the future: donaldtrumpart.com, 3dtrump.com, trumpgrapes.com, trumpsoda.com, and trumptables.com are just some of these examples. But Trump is also using this tactic to prevent being badmouthed by rivals, particularly Clinton supporters. Perhaps wary of the domain hillaryclinton2016.com, a site that looks like the real deal but actually features many mocking articles and a damning assessment of her political views, Trump took it upon himself to add several derogatory domains to his personal list too, addresses like donaldtrumpnetworksucks.com.