TEHRAN – Professor Maxwell McCombs says Donald Trump’s hostile statements against Iran are part his ‘demagogic style”

The comments by the Texas University professor comes as Americans decide today whether Trump or his rival Hillary Clinton will be elected president. The results are due on Wednesday.

“It is clear to me that Trump has made more critical and hostile statements about Iran. It is part of his demagogic style,” McCombs tells the Tehran Times in an exclusive interview.

McCombs, one of the two founding fathers of empirical research on the agenda-setting function of the press, also says, “The core of Trump's support are white males with less than a college education, a group that feels it is losing status as the demographies of the U.S. change.”

On his prediction of the presidential election, the professor says, “In the final weekend before the presidential election, Clinton had a small lead nationally and in key states according to the best polls, those that are based on individual interviews rather than online or robocall polls.”

Trump accused the media of launching a coordinated action against him during the presidential campaigns.

“Trump has defined his personality in the news by a continuing stream of outlandish and brutish statements, the kinds of extreme statements that catch the attention of journalists,” McCombs notes. “As a consequence of this continuing barrage of statements by Trump, the media coverage of the campaign has been more spectacle than substantive.”

PA/PA