Trump exploiting US voters’ ignorance in midterm elections: Analyst

Many people living in the United States are unaware about America’s history and politics and President Donald Trump is exploiting this ignorance in the upcoming midterm congressional elections, an independent political and cultural analyst in California says.

Mainstream news outlets in the US have been misleading Americans about domestic and global affairs, Mark Mason said in an interview with Press TV on Friday.

“Americans simply don’t know anything and it's extremely difficult to know anything; they’re confronted with Fox News and MSNBC; the corporate media here is simply a massive crude propaganda machinery,” Mason said.

“American schools don’t teach any history and American teachers don’t know anything and American journalists don’t know anything, the American people don’t know anything and thus a demagogue who’s helping the corporate elite raid the public treasury, might get away with absolutely ludicrous statements,” he added.

The results of a poll published in 2016 by VOA News showed that many people who live in the United States are uninformed about America’s history and heritage.

The poll, which was conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), surveyed both college graduates and the general public and found many were lacking some basic knowledge about the US.

“There is a crisis in American civic education. Survey after survey shows that recent college graduates are alarmingly ignorant of America’s history and heritage,” ACTA said.

PressTV-Trump escalating divisive rhetoric ahead of elections

US President Donald Trump is dramatically escalating his efforts to take advantage of racial divisions and cultural fears in the final days of the midterm election campaign.

Trump, with the help of many Republican congressional candidates, is dramatically escalating his efforts to take advantage of racial divisions and cultural fears in the final days of the midterm election campaign.

Trump has intensified his divisive rhetoric as part of an overt attempt to rally white supporters to voting stations and preserve the Republican majority in Congress, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

He ratcheted up the anti-immigrant rhetoric that has been the centerpiece of his midterm push by portraying a slow-moving migrant caravan, consisting mostly of families traveling on foot through Mexico, as a dangerous invasion, the newspaper said in its report.

The president has repeatedly described the migrants as “bad thugs” and criminals while claiming without evidence that the caravan contains “unknown Middle Easterners” — seemingly suggesting there are terrorists mixed in with the families fleeing violence in Central American nations and seeking asylum in the United States.

“Trump is using an old, old political trick; the goal is to convince voters to vote against their own personal and political interests,” Mason said. “And one strategy for achieving that goal is to scare the voters and what Trump is doing and has used many, many times in the past here in the US is to create a false dangerous 'other'.”

Trump acknowledged on Friday that Republicans could lose their majority in the House of Representatives, while they could maintain their control of the Senate.

Experts have predicted Democrats could win the 24 seats they need to gain control of the House for the first time since 2010.

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