History professor Allan Lichtman of American University in Washington, D.C., made international headlines last fall when he predicted that then-businessman Donald Trump would win the presidency.
Lichtman — seemingly against all odds and with most predictions and polls favoring Democrat Hillary Clinton — was right. But as it turns out, he had a related prediction that Trump supporters will surely dislike: that Trump would also be impeached.
It’s a prediction he breaks down in detail in his new book, “The Case for Impeachment,” arguing his contention that a Republican Congress will boot Trump from office at some point during his first term. And considering Lichtman’s past predictive track record over the past eight electoral cycles, people will surely be looking at his claim with intrigue.
Trump, himself, reportedly reached out to Lichtman to discuss his first prediction, though he didn’t acknowledge the second one.
“Taking time out of preparing to become the world’s most powerful leader, he wrote me a personal note, saying ‘Professor — Congrats — good call,'” Lichtman wrote in the book, according to Politico. “What Trump overlooked, however, was my ‘next big prediction’: that, after winning the presidency, he would be impeached.”
While the professor’s secondary proclamation is being given newfound attention due to his coming book release on April 18, he was already openly discussing the prospects back in November, just days after Trump’s electoral win; he said then that Vice President Mike Pence would become the preferred presidential option for the GOP, as The Washington Post noted.
“I’m going to make another prediction. This one is not based on a system; it’s just my gut,” he told the Post. “They don’t want Trump as president, because they can’t control him. He’s unpredictable. They’d love to have Pence — an absolutely down-the-line, conservative, controllable Republican.”
Lichtman continued, “And I’m quite certain Trump will give someone grounds for impeachment, either by doing something that endangers national security or because it helps his pocketbook.”
In his book, the professor makes it clear he’s no fan of Trump, detailing what he sees as problems with the nation’s 45th president — a laundry list of offenses that he believes could lead to impeachment, including allegations that he committed treason with Russia and Trump University drama, among other purported infractions, Politico reported.
As for his prediction that Trump would win, Lichtman told MSNBC earlier this year that he ignored pundits and pollsters and, instead, relied on his belief that “elections are primarily referenda on the strength and performance of the party in power.”
“Looking at that, I was able to see the many vulnerabilities of the Democrats,” he said. “A pasting in the midterm elections, an open seat is always tough, pesky third-party candidates, a contentious nomination struggle, the lack of a follow-up in the second term to anything like the Affordable Care Act or anything in foreign policy like the dispatch of Osama bin Laden in the first term.”
As Faithwire previously reported, Lichtman wasn’t the only professor to predict a Trump victory, as Helmut Norpoth, a political science professor at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, also devised what he calls “The Primary Model,” a two-prong approach to predicting the outcomes of presidential campaigns.
He, too, said Trump would win the election, with his prediction model finding before November that Trump had a 87 percent to 99 percent chance of winning. Read more about that here.
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