Donald Trump has turned his seething hostility for the media into a familiar chant that anything critical of him is “fake news.” Simultaneously, he has relentlessly hyped his pals at State-Run TV (aka Fox News). One of the best examples of that was seen Thursday morning when Trump called in to Fox and Friends for a half hour of tongue bathing.

However, it will be hard for Trump to dismiss the results of a new poll that puts him in a decidedly negative light. Otherwise known in the rest of the media as a realistic assessment of his floundering presidency. The new poll is by Fox News, and it has very little for which Trump can supply his usual narcissistic boasting.

To begin with, Trump’s approval rating is a pitiful forty-four percent. That’s down a point from last month’s poll. Likewise, his disapproval rose a point to fifty-three percent. He’s underwater on specific issues like Immigration, Syria, and Russia. And he’s treading water on the economy and North Korea. More specifically on the economy, survey results say that fifty-seven percent of voters say that Trump’s economic policies only help “people with more money.”

With regard to Trump’s unsavory connections to Russia, several question were asked that don’t bode well for the President. For instance, A majority of fifty-one percent say that Trump has not been tough enough on Russia. A plurality of forty-nine percent say that it’s extremely or very important that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia should continue. Only twenty-nine percent say that it should not. Fifty-six percent say that it is at least somewhat likely that Mueller’s investigation will find that Donald Trump committed criminal or impeachable offenses. More worrisome is that seventy-one percent think Trump will fire Mueller before the investigation is complete. It’s clear the American people are concerned that Trump might interfere with an investigation that they believe will show Trump to be a criminal.

Finally, many Trump supporters are fond of defending his belligerence, his disrespect for the institutions of government and the media, his infantile insults and divisiveness, his brazen and repeated lying, as just the consequences of an outsider whose mission is to turn Washington upside down and “drain the swamp.” However, on the question as to whether the disruption Trump brought to Washington is a good or bad thing, a plurality of forty-six percent said that it’s bad.

Trump’s practice under these circumstances is to ignore any news that falls short of fawning adoration. So even though this poll was produced by the only news network he respects, he will certainly pretend that it doesn’t exist. Just as he has ignored the latest results of his favorite pollster, Rasmussen. Ten days ago Trump tweeted proudly that he had cracked fifty-one percent. Since then he has dropped to forty-seven percent. And that’s still higher than the consensus numbers complied by RealClear Politics, which show an average approval of 41.8 percent.

Expect these numbers to decline further as Trump continues to embarrass himself with more public meltdowns. And expect him to ignore those declines, except to get even more frantic and unhinged as he realizes the walls are closing in around him.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.