There has been a lot going wrong for Donald Trump lately. Most of it due to his own incompetence and big mouth. He admitted that he would take dirt on on political opponents from hostile foreign governments. He accused his own White House counsel of perjury. He threatened an economic catastrophe if he isn’t reelected. And he even speculated about declaring himself Dictator-for-Life.
So what more could go wrong for Trump after a week wherein he has made assholery a hallmark of his presidency? Well, he might want to cut back on consumption of his beloved Fox News. That’s because they just released a poll that has almost nothing but bad news for him. It’s funny how Trump rejects polls across the board until one says something nice about him. And that one is often Fox News. But now he will have to lump Fox in with all the other “Fake News” haters trying to destroy him.
It starts with his approval rating that Fox puts at a dismal 45 percent. Even worse, the breakdown of those numbers showed that only 21 percent strongly approve, while 41 percent strongly disapprove. And this comes the day after Trump celebrated the results of a bogus survey by the notoriously disreputable Rasmussen Reports, that showed a ridiculous 51 percent approval.
Additionally, the poll pitted Trump against the top five Democratic candidates and Trump lost to all of them: Biden/Trump: 49/39; Sanders/Trump: 49/40; Harris/Trump: 42/41; Warren/Trump: 43/41; Buttigieg/Trump: 41/40.
Quinnipiac just ran a similar poll with the same results. What’s more, Trump lashed out at reports about leaked results to his own internal polling that also showed him losing. He called both the reports and the polls fake news. But for some reason, he just fired those pollsters.
Fox News included a question in their poll that asked “What would your reaction be if Donald Trump were reelected president?” The answers were Enthusiastic/Pleased: 36 percent versus Displeased/Scared: 50 percent. They also asked “Do you think a politician can have low moral and ethical standards and still be a good leader?” By a 25 percent margin (35/60) they said resoundingly “NO.”
There was plenty of other bad news for Trump in this poll. For instance: Respondents say that Trump’s immigration efforts have “gone too far” (50%); they support the Dreamers (72%); they oppose Trump’s tariffs (52%); they oppose his border wall (55%); a plurality say that Trump’s tax reforms “benefit people with more money” (48%); And on whether Trump coordinated with Russia, 50 percent of voters say that he did.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
Taken together, this is devastating news for Trump. Not only because the numbers themselves indicate how deeply unpopular he and his ideas are, but because this is from a source that he relies on for sycophantic bootlicking and positive reinforcement. Unfortunately for Trump, he can’t wave off this poll like he does all the others. He can’t accuse the source of being Trump-haters or denizens of the “Deep State.” And he’s going to have a hard time pretending that the 43 percent of American voters in this survey who say that he should be impeached are paid plants by George Soros. He’ll need a whole new level of self-deception to slog through this.
