Historian Allan Lichtman on Thursday largely blamed “disinformation” and bigotry for his wrong prediction that Vice President Kamala Harris would defeat President-elect Donald Trump in Tuesday’s elections.
Lichtman accurately forecast nine of the 10 last elections before wrongly predicting Harris would be victorious, according to USA Today. The historian, on his YouTube channel, argued that voters were not “rational” or “pragmatic” due to what he characterized as a massive uptick in “disinformation” and Trump’s promotion of “xenophobia,” “misogyny” and “racism.”
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“I think two things this year, and maybe going forward, broke this premise of a rational, pragmatic electorate, and these are trends that are not new but have exploded this year beyond anything we’ve ever seen before. First is disinformation,” Lichtman said. “Always had disinformation, but we’ve never had anything remotely on this scale, where billionaires — I don’t know how much Elon Musk is worth, I’m sure more than a hundred billion dollars — who control critical sources of information for the electorate. I mean, Elon Musk owns X, and I’ve seen reports that his disinformation that he’s put out, has been viewed by two billion viewers, vastly more influential than New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, CBS.”
The historian also alleged that Musk is not the only billionaire disseminating “disinformation.” He asserted that “the incredible explosion of disinformation” has led to Americans believing falsehoods about the state of the American economy, “mak[ing] it very difficult for a rational, pragmatic electorate to operate.”
“Then add to that that we’ve seen Trump and his allies exploit, far more than ever before — even 2016 and 2020 — trends that run deep into American history and still resonate at this time: xenophobia, fear of foreign influences … We have never seen, in recent history, xenophobia to this level, and it digs deep into a trend in American history. It’s not something brand new, and it’s not just white people, you know?” Lichtman said. “People of all races and ethnicities can be subject to xenophobia.”
“And finally, there’s racism, one of the deepest, most pervasive trends in American history,” he added. “And we have seen, just as Trump and his allies have brought misogyny and xenophobia to a new level, he’s also brought blatant racism to a new level … So we see then the explosion of disinformation and these three dark trends from American history, and that calls into question the whole premise behind the keys of rationality and pragmatism.”
Lichtman earlier in his video also said the Democratic Party publicly attacking President Joe Biden when he was still running for reelection could have contributed to his wrong prediction.
Radio host Charlamagne Tha God and CNN’s Van Jones both recently argued against exclusively blaming the election results on “racism” and “sexism.”
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