While there is little doubt that Trump’s rhetoric is harmful to America, his repeated attacks on “fake news” is one of the most damaging. His tweets calling out every negative story that bruises his ego and his insistence on making up schoolyard bully nicknames for his “enemies” in the mainstream media will surely leave the populace less informed, less unified, and less intelligent once he finally leaves office.
Fox News analyst Howard Kurtz interviewed Republican pollster Frank Luntz on Sunday for a discussion about how great Trump is and how very unfair the media is to him. Luntz said that consumer confidence is higher than it was under President Obama (which is true, although it was very low when he began his presidency after a Republican president wrecked the economy and then rose steadily throughout his two terms) and that this should matter more than approval numbers.
The two men deduced that the consumer confidence level under Trump means that regular Americans don’t really care about all of Trump’s scandals that the mainstream media “obsess on.” It’s rather convenient that Trump’s favorite state run news source has found an all-new way to pretend Americans don’t really disapprove of Trump, although his approval ratings are at a historic low.
Luntz even made a pitch for the next presidential cabinet opening (“if I was advising the Trump administration, which I don’t”) and offered his opinion that Trump’s tweets are hurting him because the mainstream anti-Trump media then has the opportunity to attack him on those instead of reporting on all his great successes. Kurtz used the moment as a lead-in to introducing a recent Monmouth University poll, which he intended to use as another way of saying that no one trusts the media anymore.
‘Speaking of fake news, there is a new poll out from Monmouth University. “Do the media report fake news regularly or occasionally?” 77 percent say yes…’
The graphic that appeared on the screen, however, was not the graphic Kurtz was trying to discuss.
Kurtz got flustered, saying:
‘That is not the graphic we are looking for. Hold off. Take that down!’
The graphic Kurtz showed actually referenced a less flattering poll result for Fox News than any other network and showed that American news consumers trust Fox News less than any other source. According to Monmouth University‘s analysis of responses to that particular question:
‘The Monmouth University Poll also finds that Pres. Trump is trusted less as source of information than three cable news outlets – except if you ask Republicans. Nearly half the American public (48%) trusts CNN more than Trump, compared with one-third (35%) who trust Trump more than CNN and another 13% who trust both equally as a source of information. The results are similar when Trump is pitted against the left-leaning MSNBC – 45% trust MSNBC more, 32% trust Trump more, and 16% trust both equally. The right-leaning Fox News also bests the president as a trusted information source – 30% trust Fox more and 20% trust Trump more, although a plurality of 37% trust both equally.’
In other words, Fox News is the only network that a plurality of respondents believe is equally as untrustworthy as the dishonest president who lies or misinforms the public an average of six times per day.
See the full segment and Kurtz’s on-air blooper below:
.@FrankLuntz: “It’s [@POTUS‘s] own tweets that are causing so much of the trouble… He should be focused on the economy and on taxes.” #MediaBuzz pic.twitter.com/hbjdU6G7gz
— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 8, 2018
Featured image screengrab via Twitter
H/T: RawStory
