10 casualties of the 2016 Presidential Election

1. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

The chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee was one of the first to succumb. Leaked emails showed her championing Hillary Clinton’s interests to the apparent detriment of Bernie Sanders. With her ouster came an outpouring of personal attacks. She was labeled a narcissist, compared to Donald Trump and accused of using the DNC for personal advancement.

2. Donna Brazile

After Wasserman Schultz was booted from the DNC, Donna Brazile, a political strategist and member of CNN’s roundtable of pundits, was installed as the DNC’s interim chair. A WikiLeaks email crack revealed Brazile had tipped off the Clinton campaign off to a question that would be posed during a town hall debate in March. The email cost Brazile her job on CNN in late October.

3. Billy Bush

Access Hollywood host Billy Bush co-starred with Donald Trump in the infamous 2005 videotape. Although Bush did little more than laugh when the future Republican nominee made lewd, predatory remarks about groping women, his association with the incident forced him out of NBC, which had recently made him a host on Today.

4. Women, immigrants and minorities

Donald Trump declared open-season on immigrants when he announced his candidacy in June 2015 and accused Mexican immigrants of being criminals and proposed the building of a border wall to keep them out. In the following months Trump proposed a ban on Muslims from entering the country, depicted black lives as hopeless, mocked Asians and the disabled. His insults to women were many, and included a rude remark about Carly Fiorina’s face and a complaint that a Miss Universe looked like a pig.

5. Obamacare

Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act was trampled this year. Trump called Obamacare a “disaster.” Bill Clinton said Obamacare is “the craziest thing in the world.”

6. James Comey and the FBI

FBI director James Comey injected himself into the election in July when he first cleared Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing in the email investigation, then backtracked, then reaffirmed. He repeated his flip-floppery in the tense final days of the election when he chose to notify Congress that there may be new evidence implicating Clinton, and then wrote another letter canceling that out on Nov. 6. The episode positioned Comey as a target for both Democrats and Republicans, who have been calling for investigations into his dealings and suggesting he be booted.

7. The Khans

After Khizr and Ghazala Khan the Pakistani-American parents of Hymayun, a U.S. soldier killed in the Iraq war, appeared at the Democratic National Convention in July, Trump questioned whether Clinton’s campaign wrote the speech, and if the mother was “allowed” to speak. The remarks quickly led to a protracted back and forth with Khan and Trump, mainly on Twitter.

8. Bill Clinton

Desperate to deflect attention from accusations of his sexual misconduct, Donald Trump called a surprise news conference with Clinton’s “victims” moments before the second presidential debate on Oct. 9 in Las Vegas. The group included Jaunita Broderick, a woman who claimed Clinton raped her in 1978.

9. John McCain and POWs

Trump attacked Sen. John McCain, a former Vietnam POW. “He is not a war hero,” Trump asserted. “I like people that weren’t capture, OK?” McCain demanded an apology to the families of POWs but didn’t get it.

10. Tic Tacs

Tic Tacs were rolling in their dispenser after the Access Hollywood footage went viral. “I’m going to use some Tic Tacs in case I start kissing her,” Trump says in the video as he approaches a woman. Tic Tac USA took a tasteful stance. “Tic Tac respects all women. We find the recent statements and behavior completely inappropriate and unacceptable,” the company tweeted.