While this is factually possible, I don't think it would have been a necessary act to facilitate Donald Trump winning the elections. Although technically, he hasn't even won if you would see it from the popular vote point-of-view, which says something about the voting procedure (not for the first time, too).
A couple of factors which I think played an important part are:
- Social media becoming a host of fake news stories while also enabling people to hold their own (amplified) truths (the latter posing somewhat of a luxury problem <- as long as people constructively challenge eachother)
- The failure of media to properly inform without any bias or favoritism (for example, presenting the election as a choice between ultimately two candidates instead of four; acting on what general polls say, instead of keeping world events in perspective)
- Donald Trump's political pragmaticalness which took advantage of any ambiguity, fear/outrage and of how far both the Democratic and (during the primaries) the Republican party were removed from "what is going on".
- To me it seemed that a choice between Clinton or Sanders would mean a divide in the Democratic party; even moreso than the choice between Trump or Cruz (which is quite a feat considering almost none of the Republican establishment endorsed Trump - making the choice for him that more appealing to the disgruntled Republican voter)
- The best reason I can give for Trump's win despite the obcenities and controversies he was involved in, is that these instances fit within his public image which people have become gradually accustomed to. The majority of outrage this caused was responded with pent-up frustration by people who in their opinion had endured enough political correctness (PC) by so-called social justice warriors (SJW), labeling the outrage as "overreactive" and "moralistic". It also made him a relatively more relatable candidate to many.