APUSH Textbooks Are Covering The Trump Presidency; The Bias Is Worse Than You Think
APUSH Textbooks Are Covering The Trump Presidency; The Bias Is Worse Than You Think
The most popular APUSH textbook describes Trump as a "sexual predator." U.S. History textbooks that cover all the way through the Trump presidency.
I reviewed five of the most commonly used AP U.S. History textbooks that cover all the way through the Trump presidency.
Used every day by high school students in college-level history classes, the books all contain anti-Trump editorializing, false narratives, and employ selective editing to leave out significant stories that occurred during the Trump presidency.
The books all appear on the College Board’s list of textbooks that meet the AP Course Audit curricular requirements.
Nearly all of the textbooks claim “Russian meddling” was responsible for the 2016 election of Donald Trump, despite that narrative being debunked through multiple studies and news reports. A New York University Center for Social Media and Politics study found that Russian Twitter accounts had no measurable impact on the 2016 election. Facebook’s internal investigation also found that 56% of the $100K worth of Facebook ads purchased by Russians in 2016 were viewed on the platform after the election was over.
They also leave out all the details of how the Trump/Russia media narrative unraveled. None of them mention the phony Steele Dossier, how the FBI abused FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) to spy on Trump, the illegal unmasking of Michael Flynn, how officials like John Brennan, James Clapper, and Rep. Adam Schiff lied to the public about Russian collusion, or the role Hillary Clinton’s campaign played in feeding false Trump/Russia stories to the press.
Many of the books also cover in depth the unproven sexual misconduct allegations against President Trump and Justice Clarence Thomas while altogether leaving out any mentions of the many similar allegations against President Bill Clinton.
In addition, they all repeat debunked narratives about the Trayvon Martin shooting, and cover the Michael Brown shooting without acknowledging that the Obama Justice Department found the “hands up don’t shoot” narrative was a complete fabrication.
One textbook covers Officer Brian Sicknick’s death without clarifying that he died of natural causes from a stroke. The only one that covers the coronavirus pandemic claims that “wet markets” were the most likely origin of the virus while leaving out the lab leak theory.
One textbook says that Donald Trump’s message in 2016 “appealed successfully to nostalgia for a time when people of color and women knew their ‘place,’” that Donald Trump tweeting about how LeBron James and Maxine Waters “lack in intelligence” is racist, and that Trump’s election was responsible for hurricanes. Another attribute Trump’s victory in 2016 to “angry white men.”
One book contains the Trump Charlottesville “very fine people on both sides” hoax and another flat-out falsely claims Trump never condemned Charlottesville at all.
Here is what I found in each book.