I mean I'll give the point that he wasn't really aware of it at the time. But if you're going to be bitching about one dude almost 10 years later then you should have an idea of what you're bitching about and the origin. It's not as though I'm claiming he should know the entire campaign, who said what, how the race was ran or whatever else. Just that in 2016 Trump was also supposed to be btfo and reality said "I want some funny."
If his argument is just going to be "derrr well the news n stuff said he wuz gonna looz" then I'm going to expect the bare minimum of counting orange mans first step on the stage to count. He was involved in three elections, and it's disingenuous at best to just totally ignore the first one. If 15 million is the plot point you're going for then I'm going to expect someone to at the very least look at all three elections Trump was in, the vote counts, and at least the bare minimum of a refresher of these polls you're talking about for each election. You don't have to rely on your memory to actually look up the information.
Otherwise I'm going to assume you made a choice and refused to do so or didn't like what you found. Him just pretending that orange man bad was only relevant and a political problem since 2019-2020 is bull, especially with the climate he would have been growing up in.
Admittedly I'm aware I'm expecting a lot from the creature we know as Nolan but this is just how I see it.