Supporters of Kamala Harris have blamed brainwashing and misinformation for Donald Trump’s election victory.
Speaking to the Express in Madison, Wisconsin following the Republican’s resounding victory in the Presidential race, young Democrat voters gave their reasons for the defeat.
“I’m just really disappointed with the American people,” Ava from Chicago told the Express. “I think that, as much as he claims to hold American values, he puts it all to shame.
“I think the education system is showing some failure with the amount of young people, especially that I know, who voted for him.”
Ava, who said she’d been crying all day since finding out Donald Trump had won, felt friends had voted for the billionaire because “they’re brainwashed”.
“I don’t understand how someone could vote for him,” she added. “I really thought that it was at least going to be closer [and] I’m surprised that she didn’t win the popular vote. I understand that she had like such a short amount of time, but I guess it didn’t work out.”
Dah, a trainee electrician, claimed there was an even more sinister explanation for the vote going Trump’s way.
“I’ve heard that in Milwaukee 30,000 [votes] got lost. I think that’s why Trump probably won, right? A lot of miscounting.”
Asked to clarify whether he was suggesting there had been fraud he said: “Yeah, maybe.”
Another student called Avery said he planned to leave the country as a result of Trump coming to power because he was fearful over what would happen in the next four years as a member of the LBGT community.
He claimed misinformation was to blame for Kamala Harris’ defeat and, like Ava, suggested education should be improved in the wake of the loss.
Avery added: “People don’t have a lot of media literacy in America. They read things and they don’t know how to decipher what’s real and what’s not.
“So when they see things from elite officials like Donald Trump and his team they take it at face value and they don’t do a lot of research to find out what’s really true or not.
“You [need to] teach media literacy in school [because] I think it’s a really important skill. I think it’s just as important as reading and writing because as we get older, social media is something that you’re involved with every single day.
“I spend hours on my computer, whether it’s reading news or doing assignments, it’s impossible to avoid that.
“I have a little brother who’s on his phone kind of a lot and if he doesn’t know how to tell what’s true or not [that might be harmful as] he’s consuming a lot of information.”
Avery claimed to have witnessed this lack of knowledge from peers first-hand.
“I had a conversation with two of my friends over the summer who are both women and neither of them knew anything really about what they were talking about, which is really disappointing,” he said. “They both voted for Trump and they were not really receptive to what [I] had to say.”
On the Wisconsin University student campus there was a clear split between those who voted for Trump and the Kamala fans.
Shortly before the Express spoke to Avery a group walked by who said they had all voted for the former president and were pleased he won.
“Did you notice how they were all white men?” Avery commented. “Another reason they might not care is because then these issues don’t matter to them. They don’t have to think about abortion, women’s health care or immigration.
“This is a PWI – a predominantly white institution – and it’s also a school where a lot of these kids are wealthy, and so they don’t have to think about those kinds of things.”
Avery felt that influential podcaster Joe Rogan’s last-minute endorsement of Donald Trump had been a major factor in helping to sway the young men who voted for the former president.
“I think Joe Rogan is a crazy person just like Donald Trump,” he added.
