As the clash between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren continues to be fueled by media reports, progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski pointed out that a recent Gallup poll put Donald Trump’s approval rating at 45 percent. He noted that this number is higher than Americans’ trust in mass media, which was clocked at 41 percent in a previous Gallup poll in September.
“He’s more popular than the media,” Kulinski tweeted.
In the September survey, Gallup noted that Republicans’ trust in the media remains at a low following Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, with just 15 percent saying they have trust and confidence in it. Conversely, 69 percent of Democrats said the same, highlighting the partisan divide.
“President Donald Trump’s description of the media as ‘the enemy of the people’ has undoubtedly colored the views of all Americans,” the pollster wrote.
Kulinski’s point came amid a recent CNN report that claims Sanders told Warren in a private 2018 meeting that a woman can’t win against Trump. The news comes amid the Vermont senator’s surge in the polls and the Massachusetts senator’s decline, and on the night before Tuesday’s presidential debate.
The story — which sources four people who were not present in the meeting — has drawn criticism from all across the political spectrum for its curious timing, with some accusing mainstream outlets of working to benefit Warren.
“The corporatists think Bernie is gonna win because they went with the least subtle least believable line of all time,” Kulinski tweeted.
NEW: @BernieSanders campaign manager responds to report that in 2018 Sanders told @ewarren that a woman couldn’t win in 2020. @fshakir : “It is a lie.” pic.twitter.com/JTgugmlb2k
— Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) January 13, 2020
Activist Imraan Siddiqi noted that similar patterns were used to attack Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.
“At this point we should be pretty well aware of how manufactured narratives work and how they’re intentionally thrust into the news cycle.”
Skepticism was not only expressed the left side of the political spectrum, either. Conservative commentator and frequent media critic Mike Cernovich noted that Warren declined to comment about the quotes attributed to her in the CNN story by people who claimed that she spoke to them.
“The story still ran, because clown world,” he tweeted.
Fellow media critic and Dilbert author Scott Adams called the accusations “obviously bullsh*t” and “not remotely believable.”
Although Trump and his supporters have often expressed skepticism in mass media outlets, a similar degree of doubt has been expressed by Sanders’ backers, and more recently, those of Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang . The 44-year-old serial entrepreneur himself said that media corruption was the thing that surprised him the most during his presidential campaign, noting that there is some truth to Trump’s frequent accusations of “fake news” leveled at the coverage of his presidency.