A historian says President Donald Trump has earned a rather dark spot in American history. In his view, Trump’s obituary should open with the damage he has done to the backbone of democracy.
Writing in his column for Salon on Wednesday, October 28, Alan Lichtman said Trump won’t be remembered for his political victories or policies but for his relentless campaign to destroy truth in the electoral system.
“He has done more than any American in history to convince his fellow citizens that their votes are not counted honestly. That dubious achievement belongs in the first line of his obituary,” he wrote.
The American University professor, who earned the nickname ‘Nostradamus’ for his election predictions, said Trump has effectively tried to tear apart the nation’s faith in its elections.
His indictment of Trump’s legacy comes with less than a week before the November 3 midterms, at a time when Trump is once again claiming elections are rigged.
Lichtman referred to an October 18 report by CBS News’ 60 Minutes, which found that in the first 21 months of his second term alone, Trump had made over 150 claims of election rigging.
He calls out the irony of Trump’s claim, pointing to his election victory and his party controlling both houses of Congress.
“This is not the grievance of a defeated candidate. It is the drumbeat of a sitting president who won an historic election in 2024, controls the executive branch, and still insists that the system that elected him is rotten.”
Lichtman calls Trump’s July 16 address from the White House the “centerpiece” of his election lies, in which the president claimed that elections were vulnerable to being stolen using heavily redacted documents as proof, which election officials and security experts say show no evidence of election rigging.
He said that Trump’s 2020 claim of the election being stolen from him went through audits, recounts, and several court cases, yet the result remained the same.
He reviewed American presidential history, noting that John Adams conceded to his rival, Thomas Jefferson, and that Abraham Lincoln “held an election he expected to lose and privately pledged to cooperate with his successor.” He also mentioned Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush, who all conceded without a fuss.
For Lichtman, the matter is about more than just an election dispute. A democracy requires that losers accept the result so the American public can trust the process. That principle could be tested Tuesday as the two parties wait for the midterm votes to be counted and certified.
Trump’s midterm campaign, in some ways, is more about setting up a rigged election claim than helping GOP candidates win.
During a campaign rally in Georgia earlier this month, the president claimed that Senator Jon Ossoff’s election victory was illegitimate.
While Lichtman concedes there is cause to criticize election rules and partisan redistricting, he distinguishes those issues from baseless attacks on how ballots are tallied.
He describes the president’s claim that he will accept the midterm results if they are “honest” as another way of saying, “if the republicans win.”
He concluded the opinion piece by predicting that, in the face of defeat, Trump will repeat his behavior after the 2020 elections, with “more lawsuits and pressure on Republican legislators and election officials to alter results.”