Donald Trump Polls: Even Fox News Finds Voters Are Turning On The President
Donald Trump is waging a battle on the media, but a new poll finds that voters aren’t buying the argument — and it comes from Fox News, of all places.
The cable news outlet has long taken a conservative bend, with its pundits and talk show hosts often accused of boosting Republican politicians and taking aim — sometimes unfairly — at Democrats. But Fox News played an interesting role during the 2016 campaign, with many of its talking heads initially against Trump during the Republican primary, but moving in his camp when Trump secured the unlikely victory.
In recent weeks, Fox News has remained a major backer of President Trump. After Trump’s press conference this week that was largely derided as unhinged — at one point, Trump continued to state incorrectly that his electoral college victory was the largest since Ronald Reagan, even when an NBC News reporter corrected him — Fox News was still in his corner.
In an opinion piece published after the conference, Fox News host Sean Hannity said that Trump took on the “alt-left propaganda media” and delivered his message directly to the American people.
“In a marathon press conference, Trump turned the tables on the press and made his case that the media’s agenda-driven campaign to destroy him is dishonest. The event was supposed to be an announcement of his new pick for secretary of the Department of Labor, Alexander Acosta. But Trump had more than that on his mind. And by speaking on live television, Trump went over the media’s heads and straight to you.”
But now a poll shows that even Fox News can’t corroborate narrative that the media is unfairly against Donald Trump. A new poll directly from the news outlet found that voters are split on whether they trust Trump to tell the truth.
“The survey released on Friday found that 45 percent of voters trust the White House to “tell the public the truth” while 42 percent of voters could say the same about the news media,” The Hill noted, adding, “The poll also revealed that 68 percent of voters believe that the media has been tougher on Trump than his predecessor President Obama. Only 18 percent of responders believe that the media has been giving President Trump an easier time, while 12 percent believe that both are treated the same.”
Fox News Poll: Voters divided over trusting Trump or the media https://t.co/wGT0PfoJBg pic.twitter.com/zKXtRjDtCb
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 18, 2017
A majority of people polled — 55 percent in all — said they believe that the media is obligated to cover the president aggressively, while only 28 percent said they should give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt.
The poll was released as Donald Trump made his most blistering attack yet on the American news media. In a message posted to Twitter on Friday evening, Trump called the media “the enemy of the American People” and listed several outlets by name.
“The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” the amended tweet said.
Trump’s rhetoric was slammed by many critics, who noted that the phrase “enemy of the people” has often been used by dictators as justification to jail critics or even have them killed.
Words matter. My great-grandfather was sentenced to the gulag under Stalin for being "an enemy of the people." He was a poet… https://t.co/DlcqNppd5q
— Lucy Kafanov ???? (@LucyKafanov) February 17, 2017
This is not the only poll showing Donald Trump losing support rapidly among the American people. A Gallup daily tracking poll found that Trump sunk to the lowest one-month approval rating of any president in the history of the poll, NBC News noted.
[Featured Image by Aude Guerrucci – Pool/Getty Images]
