Despite His Hysterical Smear Campaign, Americans Still Trust the Media More than Trump

Posted by Mark NC on September 12, 2018 at 5:53 pm. NO Comments :

For more than two years now, Donald Trump has been attacking what he calls the “fake news” at every opportunity. He does it in interviews, on Twitter, and at his tedious cult rallies where he seems to be on auto-pilot, regurgitating the same old cliches that his disciples devour like nicotine candy. Even after being told that his reckless labeling of the press as “the enemy of the people” was a rhetorical remnant of Joseph Stalin, Trump continues to use the line without the least bit of shame or decency.

However, after his years-long campaign of denigrating the press, as well as the Constitution’s First Amendment, Trump has gotten nowhere in terms of swaying the favor of the public. A new poll by Quinnipiac asked “Who do you trust more to tell you the truth about important issues: President Trump or the news media?” A majority of fifty-four percent chose the media. Only thirty percent chose Trump. That’s a twenty-four point margin of difference. Broken down demographically, the only group that trusts Trump more, outside of the margin of error, is Republicans. But Independents, Men, Women, and every age and ethnic group trusts the media more.

The poll also asked “Which comes closer to your point of view: the news media is the enemy of the people, or the news media is an important part of democracy?” And by an even bigger majority the media came out far ahead, with sixty-nine percent saying that the media is an important part of democracy. And once again, every demographic breakdown agreed, except for Republicans. Forty-seven percent of the Grand Ole Party actually agrees with Trump (and Stalin) that the media is the enemy of the people. This is an affirmation of the Trump rally-goers who were immortalized wearing a t-shirt that reads “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.”

The poll had plenty of other bad news for Trump and the GOP. On the question of which party voters will back in the November election, a majority of fifty-two percent said Democrats, beating Republicans by fourteen points. Seventy-two percent of voters disapprove of the job the Republican controlled Congress is doing. Perhaps that’s because fifty-eight percent of them think Congress isn’t doing enough to be a check on the President. And both of those last two responses were shared by majorities of every demographic group. These survey results are in alignment with most of the recent polling on these subjects. See also:

It seems that no matter hard Trump pushes on his media bashing, the American people see through his tirades and continue to reject him. That’s reflected in the three latest opinion polls on Trump’s favorability (CNN, Quinnipiac, and NPR/Marist) that all put him in the thirties, and at new lows. Add to that the polls showing that the public trusts special counsel Robert Mueller over Trump, and the future looks bleak for Donnie and his dwindling party. Mueller, of course, has also been the victim of Trump’s persistent, but apparently impotent, outrage.

If these results hold for the next eight weeks, the much anticipated “blue wave” is going to swell into a tsunami. According to the survey statistics experts at FiveThiryEight, Democrats need an eleven point advantage to secure a takeover of both the House and the Senate. That advantage is currently at fourteen points. But these are merely estimates based on numerical analyses. The final election results rely on people actually going to polls and casting votes. So this is no time to become complacent of overly confident. It’s time to work hard every day between now and election day. That’s the only way to achieve the victory that America needs so badly.

Death Spiral? Trump’s Favorite Poll, Rasmussen, Has Him at 44% – Lowest in 7 Weeks

Posted by Mark NC on September 5, 2018 at 2:06 pm. 2 Comments :

It isn’t easy being a malignant narcissist. Having such an intensely egocentric fetish with oneself carries with it numerous burdens. Chief among those is an unhealthy obsession with what everyone thinks of you. Consequently, Donald Trump is consumed with the polling on his public approval and, more notably, his disapproval.

There hasn’t been very much good news for Trump with regard to his recent polling. This affront to his self image caused him to freak out and mistakenly brag that he had reached a fifty-two percent approval rating. Turns out he misread the numbers. That was actually his disapproval rating.

Many of the latest surveys place him at or near the worst showings of his presidency. For instance, last week ABC/Washington Post published their most recent poll that showed Trump at a new high in disapproval (60%). It so flustered Trump that he called it a “suppression poll” in an angry tweet that falsely maligned the pollster’s accuracy. Then he followed that up with a tweet about his favorite propagandist polling outfit, Rasmussen, that was somewhat more friendly, although it still had him underwater (48-50%). Nevertheless, his tweet praised Rasmussen as “one of the most accurate.”

Seeing as how Trump appreciates the alleged accuracy of Rasmussen’s polling, he must be taking seriously the latest in their daily tracking of the President’s approval, or lack thereof. On Wednesday Trump sunk to a seven-week low. Rasmussen is reporting his disapproval at fifty-four percent. His approval was down to forty-four percent. Interestingly, Rasmussen also has Trump’s “strong” disapproval at forty-four percent, which ties with his total approval. Ouch.

For the record, the most recent Fox News poll has Trump’s approval only one point higher than Rasmussen’s (45%). So the consensus among the State TV propaganda outlets is pretty clear.

This slippage could not be happening at a worse time for the President. The special counsel, Robert Mueller, has been tightening the screws with new indictments, convictions, and guilty pleas of close Trump associates. The release of Bob Woodward’s new book, Fear: Trump in the White House, is revealing the crisis of chaos in Trump’s “Crazytown.” His Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is getting flambe’ed at his confirmation hearings in the Senate (and his approval rating is the lowest of any Supreme Court nominee).

Finally, Trump is preparing to hit the campaign trail on behalf of floundering Republicans nationwide. You have to wonder how many of them still want him to show up. Because at this rate Trump may be hitting record lows even on Rasmussen’s poll. He’s only got six more points to go before matching the thirty-eight percent he pulled on August 2, 2017. That’s totally doable, Donnie. Keep hope alive.

Whiner-in-Chief Donald Trump is Freaking Out About Polls Because He’s at Another New Low

Posted by Mark NC on August 31, 2018 at 9:18 pm. NO Comments :

It really is pathetic when the President of the United States is so obsessed with his polling that he can’t keep from whining – and lying – about it to his Dimwitted Deplorables on Twitter. But then again Donald Trump is, in his own words, “the most fabulous whiner.” It’s just too bad that he has to prove it at every opportunity, usually over something that is petty and otherwise forgettable.

On Friday an ABC/Washington Post poll was released with some data that was bound to trigger Trump’s acute insecurity and malignant narcissism. The poll showed that Trump had notched a new high in his disapproval rating of sixty percent. Considering everything that has been going wrong, he’s lucky it isn’t worse. But not known for being rational enough to appreciate that reality, Trump went off on a Twitter tirade against the poll:

First of all, two weeks before the 2016 election, the ABC Washington Post poll had the race at forty-seven percent to forty-three percent in favor of Hillary Clinton. That’s right on the mark since the final election results gave Clinton a three million vote lead. This polling measures voter sentiment, not the electoral college. So Trump’s complaint that the poll was “by far the least accurate one” is just another of his innumerable untruths. Will he ever learn? Don’t bother to answer that. Just take a look at his next tweet:

Rasmussen does currently have Trump at forty-eight percent, but Rasmussen is a notoriously biased outfit that Republicans lean on for positive news when all the reputable pollsters are providing more credible numbers. And Obama’s ratings on August 31, 2010, were also forty-eight percent, so Trump was not higher, as he claimed. As for Trump’s assessment of these two pollsters, the experts at FiveThirtyEight have ABC/Washington Post at A+, while Rasmussen is much farther down the scale at a mere C+.

It’s no wonder that Trump is concerned about his polling. As his presidency continues to be mired in scandal, the results on several other topics are just as bad as his approval. For instance, sixty-three percent of voters support special counsel Robert Mueller. Sixty-four percent oppose Trump firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which he is threatening to do after the midterms. Fifty-three percent say that Trump is already guilty of obstruction of justice for interfering with the Mueller probe. And a plurality of nearly half (forty-nine percent) of Americans say that Congress should begin impeachment hearings. That includes thirty percent of conservatives.

Trump is a walking disaster and he knows it. So he’s trying to gaslight the public with his ludicrous Twitter tantrums. And all of this bad news is coming as Trump is preparing to hit the road to campaign for Republican candidates. You have to wonder how many of them still want him to show up. He just announced that he’ll be holding a “major rally” in Texas for Sen. Ted Cruz. That freak show ought to be a real humdinger considering all the awful things they’ve said about each other. Be sure to have plenty of popcorn on hand.

Daffy Donald Trump Mistakenly Tweet-Brags His 52% Approval, But That’s His Disapproval

Posted by Mark NC on August 26, 2018 at 10:06 pm. 2 Comments :

With everything that is going wrong for Donald Trump lately, it’s clear that the pressure is taking a serious toll on his already sorely inadequate comprehension skills. The average person would be feeling the heat if confronted with disastrous scenarios like having your campaign chairman (Paul Manafort) and personal attorney (Michael Cohen) convicted of multiple felonies. And add to that your friends (David Pecker, publisher of the National Enquirer) and close associates (Allen Weisselberg, CFO of your business) being granted immunity by federal prosecutors in order to testify against you.

But for someone who has severe mental deficiencies in the first place, the consequences are magnified geometrically. That’s the state that Trump finds himself in now, and the result is frightening. On Sunday evening he posted a tweet intended to excite his glassy-eyed followers and to pump up his gargantuan ego:

The media doesn’t need to make Trump look evil. And let’s just set aside that he felt it necessary to disseminate this self-exalting message on the day that saw multiple people get shot in Jacksonville, Florida. Trump said nothing about that. It’s also the day after the passing of Sen. John McCain, who Trump neglected to pay any tribute to for his decades of service to the nation. Instead he played golf at one of his resorts and had his press secretary release a statement that he was “monitoring” the Jacksonville situation. Which means he was watching Fox News.

However, what’s really astonishing about trump’s boastful tweet is that he couldn’t even get the numbers right. Yes, the poll by the Wall Street Journal and NBC News (who are, in his opinion, fake), did find that ninety percent of Republicans have a favorable view of the President. Trump may like that, but it should be a serious embarrassment to the Republican Party. What Trump failed to report accurately was his overall approval rating, which he said was fifty-two percent. The only problem with that is that’s actually his disapproval rating in the poll. His approval is only forty-four percent.

If this is the level of accuracy that we can expect from our president, then America is in deep, deep trouble. Especially coming from someone who thinks there were millions of people at his inaugural address (there weren’t). Or that three million people voted illegally (they didn’t). Or that he won the women’s vote in 2016 (just white women). Or that U.S. Steel is opening six new plants (actually it’s zero). And this could go on endlessly with all of the lies that Trump regularly tells about his imaginary accomplishments.

Unfortunately, this isn’t really that funny. If Trump can’t get the simplest numbers right about polls or the attendance at his cult rallies, how can he be expected to get the numbers right about the economy or the quantity of nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the United States and its enemies? This sort of cognitive infirmity poses serious risks for our nation. And it’s just more proof that Trump is unfit to be in any position of leadership.

POLL: Trump’s GOP Favors Giving Fascist Authority to the President to Shut Down Critical Media

Posted by Mark NC on August 7, 2018 at 12:23 pm. NO Comments :

The disintegration of American democracy continues as the Republican Party under Donald Trump embraces the politics of totalitarian dictatorships. It’s consistent with their worshipful supplication to everything that Trump does and says. Any dissent is regarded as betrayal and party members are held to strict oaths of unbending loyalty.

In addition to rallying behind Trump’s Stalinist rant that the media is “the enemy of the American people,” a new Ipsos poll shows that a plurality of Republicans (43%) believe that he should be able to shut down any media company that he deems is behaving badly. Can you guess which ones those would be? According to Ipsos:

For the record, anyone can already sue a reporter or news outlet that knowingly publishes false information. The problem that Trump and his cult following have is when reporters publish truthful and fact-checked information that exposes their lies and the damage they are doing to the country. Their attacks on the press are not intended to produce either fairness or balance. They are intended to intimidate journalists and to poison the minds of the Deplorables so that they trust no other source than Dear Leader.

This strategy is also seen in Trump’s determined efforts to threaten reporters with banishment from White House events and the revocation of their licenses. And his relentless castigation of the media as “sleazy,” “disgraceful,” “horrendous”, “liars,” is bound to lead to violence. Meanwhile, his communications office has made the daily press briefings irrelevant. For one thing, they are hardly daily. There were five briefings in June and only three in July. And when they are held the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, spends most the time evading questions, haranguing reporters, and exalting Trump.

The good news is that, despite the worst efforts of Trump and the GOP to denigrate the press, the American people consistently say that they trust the media more than they trust the President. Perhaps the fact that Trump is the most documented pathological liar that’s ever occupied the White House has something to do with that opinion.

THE TRUMP EFFECT: His Attempts to Destroy the Media Have Actually Made it Stronger

Posted by Mark NC on July 31, 2018 at 11:09 am. NO Comments :

One way to look at the presidency of Donald Trump is as a contrarian indicator. Whatever he tries to achieve ends up producing the opposite results. For instance, when threatened Kim Jong Un with “fire and fury,” he later embraced him as an “honorable” man who would abandon his nuclear ambitions. And now we learn that Kim is actually escalating his intercontinental ballistic missile program.

Trump is a sort of reverse King Midas: everything he touches turns to – let’s say garbage. His tax scam has benefited the wealthy while adding a trillion dollars to the deficit. His EPA has ignored environmental protection in favor of loosening regulations for polluters. His border wall is nonexistent and Mexico definitely isn’t paying for it. What he calls “winning” is just papered over failure, much like his casinos and university.

Now the Economist has published the results of a study that tracked the fortunes of the mainstream media for the eighteen months he has occupied the White House. During the entirety of that time, Trump has castigated the supposedly free press as “horrible people,” “liars,” “sleazy,” and he has adopted Stalin’s rhetoric by calling the media “the enemy of the American people.” Lately he has also adopted the behavior of tyrants by trying to ban journalists who dare to challenge his omnipotent (more accurately, impotent) authority.

It turns out that the media enterprises that Trump has attacked the most have gained popularity and success. The Economist’s poll asked a representative sample of Americans to rate large American news organisations on a scale from “very trustworthy” to “very untrustworthy.” The outcome of this survey is a useful lesson on the ineffectual tactic of childish browbeating that is Trump’s sole method of interacting with society. According to the Economist:

So the outlets Trump hates most are flourishing, and the ones that suck up to him are suffering. The study also found that this growth was not limited to liberals stepping up their support for news that affirms their biases. Even Trump supporters were leaning more favorably toward the objects of his hostility. And the allegedly “failing” New York Times saw monthly online readership double to 130 million since Trump’s inauguration.

Combine this with other polling that shows that the American people trust the media far more than they trust Trump and you have a recipe for continuing delusions from a president who is already acutely disturbed. And this new study proves that Trump’s rabid attacks on on the Constitution are only strengthening the subjects of the First Amendments protections. Nice work, Dotard.

Fox News Reports Poll Showing Democrats are ‘Out of Step’, But Guess What They Left Out

Posted by Mark NC on July 29, 2018 at 11:03 am. 3 Comments :

The deliberate deceit and hostility of Fox News is escalating as Donald Trump gets closer to being tossed into the dustbin of history. With special counsel Robert Mueller progressing toward the inevitable report of Trump’s criminality, and former insiders like Michael Cohen preparing to truth bomb the President, the weasels at Fox News are just getting more desperate in the most obvious and embarrassing ways.

On Saturday’s episode of the Greg Gutfeld show, the eponymous host (who thinks he’s a comedian) introduced the program with the “shocking” results of an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. [Note: Fox and Friends misused the same poll] Among other things it revealed that a majority of respondents (56% to 33%) said that Democrats are “out of step with most Americans’ thinking” That’s a pretty lousy number that indicates some trouble for the party. Although it doesn’t reflect the manner in which Democrats are disconnecting. While Fox News and the GOP want you to think it’s a condemnation of the Party’s embrace of lefties like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, it could be just as easily that they think the Party isn’t embracing them tightly enough.

But what really makes this Fox News segment ludicrous is that they left out another significant result from the poll. Republicans were also deemed to be out of touch, and by a slightly larger margin (57% to 33%). For some reason that statistic was never mentioned on Fox News. Go figure.

In addition to this dissemination of blatantly distorted news, Fox also failed to mention everything else in the poll that revealed how badly the Trump administration is at odds with the American people. For instance:

They believe Trump’s tariffs will hurt, not help the economy (46-25)
Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice should continue (46-38)
Trump is too friendly with Vladimir Putin (46-39)
Russia is an adversary, not an ally (72-16)
Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election (65-26)
The interference by the Russians affected the outcome of the election (41-18)

Since Fox News went to the trouble of citing this poll, they ought to have reported the results more completely. And particularly with regard to the question of how badly Americans think the Republican Party is out of touch. But then again, Fox has never been known to responsibly cover the news, so why should they start now?

With the midterm elections coming up you can count on Fox to lie profusely about the issues and to smother Trump with accolades. Trump has promised to campaign on behalf of GOP candidates “six to seven days a week when we’re sixty days out.” So he’s effectively abdicating his presidency. And Fox News will devotedly air every single one of Trump’s boring, mindlessly repetitive rally speeches in their entirety. Which is certain to increase the incidence of cognitive infirmity among his glassy-eyed Deplorables.

GOP Deplorables Still Don’t Believe Russia Hacked the Election Even After Trump Said They Did

Posted by Mark NC on July 18, 2018 at 1:17 pm. 1 Comments :

On Wednesday morning Donald Trump was asked if Russia is still targeting U.S. elections with the intent of influencing future outcomes. He responded with a categorical “No.” That, of course, contradicts his Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, who said Monday that Russia is still engaging in “ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy.” That’s Trump dismissing the intelligence community that he said on Tuesday has his “full faith and support.”

With support like that the intelligence community might as well just lay down in front of the bus and grit their teeth. There appears to be no principle that Trump is not willing to subvert, even within hours of having asserted it. That must make it very hard for his supporters to know what the heck they are supposed to believe. Ordinarily, cult leaders like Trump stake out definitive positions that their disciples can latch onto and recite in unison at rallies. “Lock her up” and “build the wall” are effective examples of that. But there is no such chantable slogan about the Russia affair.

In the meantime, Trump’s base (and I do mean base) is proving to be even more delusional than Trump himself. In a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, Republicans are siding with Vladimir Putin against American intelligence assessments with regard to whether Russia interfered with the 2016 election:

So only a third of the Republicans in this survey agree with the U.S. government agencies that study this matter in their role as defenders of the nation. But what’s even more surprising is that only a third of Republicans agree with Donald Trump, who now says that he agrees with the intelligence community.

To be fair, the Republican electorate can’t possibly know what they are supposed to believe. Trump changes his position almost hourly. So they aren’t getting the sort of cues that cult members are accustomed to. And lord knows that aren’t capable of thinking for themselves. That leaves them scattering like frantic ants whose Capitol Hill has been washed away.

And that’s why Trump’s followers are infinitely more dangerous than Trump. He is one person who can (hopefully) be brought to justice and effectively neutralized. But his minions are less manageable and more unpredictable. They include NRA-theists and militias who are convinced of the existence of a “deep state” cabal determined to take their guns and throw them into gay-run, liberal, re-education camps. And they will align with any entity that strokes their egos and affirms their paranoid delusions. Especially if it features the sort of totalitarian control that makes them feel so cozy and pampered and safe. Which explains their affinity for Putin and Kim Jong Un – and Donald Trump.

Trump Calls the Media ‘Our Country’s Biggest Enemy’ – But America Trusts the Media More

Posted by Mark NC on June 13, 2018 at 4:32 pm. 4 Comments :

This is getting monotonous. Once again Donald Trump has lashed out at the free press and exhibited his utter contempt for the Constitution. In a Wednesday afternoon tweet the President made his position clear – again – about what he regards as the “biggest enemy” of the country. And it isn’t murderous dictators like Kim Jong Un or Vladimir Putin.

The tweet that Trump posted was a response to his critics who correctly pointed out that his meeting with Kim produced nothing for the United States, but gave Kim everything he hoped for. Kim was able to stand next to the leader of the free world as an equal with the international diplomatic legitimacy that he craved. He got Trump to call off military exercises with South Korea, leaving us, as well as our allies, unprepared for whatever potential risks exist in the region. Trump even promised to remove the sanctions on North Korea before any action to denuclearize on Kim’s part.

The United States, however, got nothing but empty promises from a known liar – or liars (Kim and Trump). And Trump slammed unnamed (nonexistent) critics who he said “would have ‘begged’ for this deal-looked like war would break out.” But the only threat of war came from Trump himself. And now that he’s cozying up to Kim he wants credit for ending the crisis he manufactured. The tweet said:

The most troubling part of that deranged outburst is that Trump is repeating a dangerously anti-American rant that he has embraced for months. By calling CNN and NBC the biggest of America’s enemies he’s proving that he doesn’t understand foreign affairs or the risk scenarios that this country faces. He is completely wrapped up in his ego-bubble that informs him that only criticism of him is an actual threat. That could end up being a tragic mistake for the welfare of the nation.

Setting aside how delusional and perilous Trump’s paranoid fantasies are, they are also contradicted by hard data. A new poll by Public Policy Polling shows that the media that Trump detests so much is held in much higher esteem by the American people. The survey asked voters who they trust more, Trump or a variety of news enterprises. Here is a summary of who is more trusted:

CNN: 53% / Trump: 38%
NBC: 53% / Trump: 39%
ABC: 53% / Trump: 39%
CBS: 53% / Trump: 39%
New York Times: 52% / Trump: 38%
Washington Post: 51% / Trump: 38%
Fox News: 32% / Trump: 26%
Media: 48% / Sarah Huckabee Sanders: 35%

The trust of the media is pretty constant no matter the source. It’s a clear majority in the low fifties. The lack of trust for Trump is also consistently dismal in the upper thirties. Even poor Sarah Sanders is regarded as less credible than the media she lies to on a daily basis. The one anomaly in the group is Fox News. That’s likely because the survey respondents couldn’t decide who they trust most or least because they couldn’t tell the two apart. But even Fox News media correspondent Howard Kurtz says Trump’s media bashing has gone too far.

There was plenty of other bad news for Trump in this survey. For instance, Democratic voters are more excited about the upcoming election than Republicans. And voters overall prefer Democrats to the GOP. Trump’s approval still can’t crack forty percent. He’s considered dishonest, a liar, mentally unbalanced, in cahoots with Russia, and that he hasn’t made America great again.

The people think Trump should resign if proof emerges that he was working with Russia. They don’t want him to fire special counsel Robert Mueller or pardon himself. A plurality believe he should be impeached. And by wide margins people want a DACA bill passed, but do not want a wall along the Mexican border. His views on gun reforms are rejected by most Americans. And every Democrat posed as a 2020 challenger defeats him.

Other than that it’s clear sailing for Trump. And these results come after two years of endless bashing of Democrats and progressive policies by the President on Twitter and his State TV colleagues on Fox News. No wonder Trump thinks the biggest enemy is the media. Because it’s his enemy. Not because it’s biased against him. But because anything that might reveal more of his deceit and corruption is going to anger him. And that’s the only thing he cares about. And it’s also something that he has no control over, which only exacerbates his rage.

Trump’s GOP: A Majority Embrace His Stalinist Rant that ‘the Media is the Enemy of the People’

Posted by Mark NC on April 28, 2018 at 11:18 am. 2 Comments :

There are innumerable ways in which Donald Trump has damaged the United States during the last fifteen tumultuous months. Even setting aside his unsavory connections to Russia and his role in helping them subvert our democracy, Trump’s negative impact is historically catastrophic. It’s ironic that he repeatedly brags that he has done more in his first year than any other president. Because he’s right, although not in the way his narcissistic dementia leads him to believe.

Trump has brazenly ignored long-standing principles for financial conflicts of interest. He has terminated regulations that protect citizens from environmental harm, consumer abuse, healthcare, and workplace safety. He has promoted discrimination against vulnerable communities encompassing race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. He has recklessly dangled the prospect of war with nuclear powers like Iran and North Korea. He has violated laws associated with ethical governing and has been frequently repudiated by the federal courts. And he has generally lowered the standards for civil discourse with his infantile name-calling, insulting, bullying, slandering, and outright lying.

But nowhere in this morass of corruption and immorality has Trump been more destructive than with his hostility to the free press and the First Amendment. He has made attacking the media a core component of his march to authoritarian rule. His cries of “fake news” whenever any journalist dares to report facts that he doesn’t like ring out across the landscape of the deplorable disciples that he cultivates. And it’s having an overtly dangerous effect on the national political environment.

A new poll by Quinnipiac asked voters this question: “Which comes closer to your point of view: the news media is the enemy of the people, or the news media is an important part of democracy?” The response by all respondents shows that a majority consider the media to be “an important part of democracy” (66 -22 percent). And while that 44 point difference is significant, it’s still frighteningly low. But it was brought down by one particular group of respondents. A majority of Republicans (51%) said that the media is “the enemy of the people.” No other demographic sector came anywhere close to that.

The phrasing of the question was clearly designed to elicit support or opposition to Trump’s infamous disparagement of the press. He has frequently called the media “the enemy of the people” in his rallies and public statements. It’s a concept he borrowed from dictators like Joseph Stalin. But the fact that it has caught on with so many Republican voters is more than a little disturbing. It indicates that Trump is successfully infecting a segment of the population with an ideology that is flagrantly anti-American. And worse – it’s pro-totalitarian dictatorship.

Fortunately, other results from the survey are more comforting:

Voters trust the media more than Trump to tell the truth about important issues: 53 – 37 percent.
The vast majority of voters say that Trump should not fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller: 74 – 13 percent (including 59 – 25 percent among Republicans).
More people believe James Comey than Trump: 54 – 35 percent.
More voters believe that the Russian government has compromising information about President Trump: 53 – 35 percent.
American voters disapprove of the job Scott Pruitt is doing as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency: 52 – 25 percent.

Still, that doesn’t absolve the Republican Party from embracing a despicable philosophy that denigrates the press and disrespects the Constitution. If they have problems with the media they should seek to reform and/or improve it, while still cherishing its ideals. Their position that it’s an opponent of democracy casts it as something that needs to be defeated and done away with. And that makes them the real foes of democracy.

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