Appearing Tuesday night on “The O’Reilly Factor,” former presidential candidate and newly hired Fox News contributor Herman Cain summarized the 2012 election’s results as an expression of America’s “severe ignorance problem.”

“The guy [Obama] hasn’t solved that many problems,” O’Reilly said. “So, I mean, why is he so popular?”

ADVERTISEMENT

“He is so popular because 51 percent of the voters were misled enough to vote for him,” Cain replied.

O’Reilly wasn’t buying it. “Oh come on,” he said. “You think after that long, long campaign that you and all the other Republican hopefuls engaged in, and that [former Republican presidential candidate Mitt] Romney has a billion dollars to spend on his advertising, and you’re still telling me that the American people are misled? I mean, how dumb are we?”

“Yes Bill,” Cain replied. “We are that dumb. Keep in mind, not everybody. Remember, he got 51 percent of the popular vote. So when you say all of America, no… We have a severe ignorance problem with the people who are so mesmerized by his popularity that they are not looking at the facts.”

“Martin Luther King Jr. said 50 years ago in 1963 something that is so appropriate to today,” he concluded. “There is nothing more dangerous than serious ignorance, and that’s what we have and he gets away with it with the help of establishment media.”

During his own presidential run in 2012, Cain once mocked a foreign policy question about Uzbekistan by calling the nation “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan” and insisting he doesn’t need to know who the country’s leader is.

ADVERTISEMENT

This video is from “The O’Reilly Factor,” aired Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013.