President Donald Trump believes a new poll showing that nearly half of Americans believe the news media is inventing stories about his administration is actually low-balling the issue.
On Wednesday night he tweeted, quoting a poll that Fox News reported on — but was actually published by Politico and Morning Consult — that found “46 percent of Americans think the media is inventing stories about Trump and his administration,” Trump wrote.
“It is actually much worse than this!” he said.
"46% of Americans think the Media is inventing stories about Trump & his Administration." @FoxNews It is actually much worse than this!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2017
The Politico poll, published Wednesday, found that nearly 50 percent of Americans do, in fact, think that the media fabricates stories about Trump and his administration, while 37 percent don’t. Republicans are more suspicious of the media than any other group, with 76 percent saying they believe in fake news. The group’s distrust of the news is not particularly surprising as the party’s leader, Trump, spends so much time criticizing the media.
Only one in five Democrats have bought into Trump’s media outrage, but 44 percent of independents think the media is making up stories.
The President’s claims on Wednesday are nothing new.
Trump has been diminishing the media since the days of his campaign when he seized on the phrase “fake news.” He’s been particularly irked the past few weeks after NBC News published a story that claimed his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a “moron” and wanted to resign this summer. The President tweeted last week, questioning what could be done to revoke the licenses of broadcast media outlets.
This week, Trump told radio host Chris Plante that he thought journalists would publish more favorable pieces about him after he won the election.
“Actually, dishonesty in the media is one of the things that surprised me the most,” he said Tuesday. “I thought after I won, the media would become much more stable and much more honest. They’ve gone crazy. CNN is a joke. NBC is a total joke. You watch what they report, it bears no relationship to what I’m doing. But the media is absolutely dishonest — and frankly, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
The Politico poll was conducted from Oct. 12 to the 16th and surveyed 1,991 registered voters. The margin of error is +/- 2 percentage points.
