 | |
Type of site | News,commentary |
|---|---|
| Available in | English |
| Founded | March 2003; 22 years ago (2003-03) |
| Headquarters | El Cerrito, California, United States |
| Founder(s) | Ed Lasky, Richard Baehr, Thomas Lifson |
| URL | americanthinker |
| Launched | November 2003 |
| Current status | Active |
American Thinker is a dailyonline magazine dealing withAmerican politics from apolitically conservative viewpoint. It was founded in 2003 by attorney Ed Lasky, health-care consultant Richard Baehr, and sociologist Thomas Lifson, and initially became prominent in the lead-up to the2008 U.S. presidential election for its attacks on then-candidateBarack Obama.[1] The magazine has been described as aconservative blog,[2][3] but often features notable conservative authors such asJerome Corsi.[4] TheSouthern Poverty Law Center has called the site "a not so thoughtful far-right online publication".[5]
In the aftermath ofDonald Trump's loss in the2020 U.S. presidential election,American Thinker published a variety of articles that had claims of election fraud.[6] Faced with a lawsuit fromDominion Voting Systems, Lifson acknowledged that the site had relied upon "discredited sources who have peddled debunked theories".[7]American Thinker likewise admitted that its election claims were "completely false and have no basis in fact" and that "it was wrong for us to publish these false statements."[8]
In 2009, in the wake of the election ofBarack Obama,American Thinker joined a wave of conservative media publications discussing the possibility of a second Civil War. They forecast the possibility of "several regional republics" emerging following the "overbearing, oppressive leviathan" of Obama's presidency.[9]
A 2008 column inAmerican Thinker drew attention to aCalifornia plan to requireprogrammable thermostats that could be controlled by officials in the event of power-supply difficulties. According toThe New York Times, the column was "by turns populist..., free-market..., and civil libertarian".[10]
In 2015 American Thinker published a blog post saying rainbow-colored Doritos were a "gateway snack to introduce children to the joys of homosexuality".[11] The site has also been described as sympathetic to thecounter-jihad movement, having published writers such asPamela Geller,Robert Spencer andPaul Weston.[12]
In a 2020 blog post on the site, Thomas Lifson referenced a paper published inGeophysical Research Letters to claim thatsea level rise has been slow and constant, and that this rise pre-dated industrialization. This claim went viral over social media in March 2020.[13] The author of the paper describes this interpretation as factually incorrect, constituting climate misinformation.[13]
Under threat of litigation, in January 2021American Thinker published a retraction of unsupported stories it published asserting thatDominion Voting Systems engaged in a conspiracy to rig the2020 presidential election against President Donald Trump, acknowledging, "These statements are completely false and have no basis in fact."[14][15][16]
In late 2024 and early 2025, a series ofAmerican Thinker articles by Jim Davis explored "the biggest scandal of all time": what he described as a confluence of "(a) the cover-up ofJoe Biden’s decline; (b)lawfare against Trump; (c) the cover-up ofHunter Biden’s influence-peddling; and now (d) billions wasted, by not just the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), but also by many other agencies, and being uncovered byElon Musk’s DOGE."[17] In May 2025, Trump confronted South African President Ramaphosa with claims of "White Genocide" being carried out under his government's oversight.Among other things he showed a printout from an article in The American Thinker although that article was not saying that the picture was from South Africa.[18][19]
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