7-26-16

Historians on Donald Trump: A Huge Hit on Facebook

by Rick Shenkman

Rick Shenkman is the editor of HNN and the author of Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics (Basic Books, January 2016). You can follow him on Twitter. He blogs at stoneagebrain.

Who says historians don't have an impact? In the three weeks since the anti-Trump Facebook page set up by David McCullough and Ken Burns went live it's drawn over 5 million views.

The page features home videos by stalwarts of the profession like Nell Irvin Painter, Bernard A. Weisberger, Stacy Schiff, Harold Holzer, Ron Chernow, William Leuchtenburg, Vicki Ruiz, Kai Bird, Joseph Ellis, Sean Wilentz, Virginia Scharff, Richard Moe, Robert Caro, Michael Kazin, William Chafe, David Levering Lewis, David Nasaw, Ron Chernow, Alan Kraut, and others. Both McCullough and Burns, of course, posted videos, too.

Millions of Facebook users have been watching and sharing the videos. Top draws include the videos by Joseph Ellis (48,000 views), Harold Holzer (50,000 views), Virginia Scarf (50,000 views), Vicki Ruiz (55,000 views), and Mark Robert Bowden (109,000 views)

Then there are the videos that have gone supernova: Ron Chernow (324,000 views), William Leuchtenburg (563,000 views), Nell Irvin Painter (970,000 views), and David McCullough (3.7 million views).