New York Times: People Who Ignore Media’s Fake Outrage Give Trump Higher Approval Rating
It was an incredible self-own when the New York Times recently ran the headline, “One Thing Helping Trump’s Approval Rating: Some People Are Not Paying Attention.” An alternate heading could have easily been, “People Who Don’t Read This Paper Infinitely Happier, Study Finds.”
The article from mid-May, by Ruth Igielnik, was based on a Times/Siena College poll that asked respondents whether they approved or not of President Trump’s performance on various issues, including immigration and the economy. It also asked how informed they were on certain so-called “major” events. “Voters who have not heard much about some of the many major news events from the first 100 days of Mr. Trump’s second term have a higher opinion of the job he is doing …,” wrote Igielnik. She added that “little under half of the 42 percent of voters who approved of the job Mr. Trump is doing as president said they had not heard much about at least some of the ups and downs of his administration’s decisions.”
The obvious point is to explain away Trump’s approval numbers, which have remained relatively stable and unremarkable as far as modern presidencies go and in spite of ginned-up hysteria by the media. As of Tuesday, the Real Clear Politics average has the president with a 46.8 percent approval, about two points higher than his record low so far this term, and just under four points lower than his record high.
People must not have heard about all the chaos!
By “Major news events,” Igielnik naturally means fake controversies manufactured by the dying news media, such as the Times. Those would include the Kilmar Abrego Garcia saga, a period of stock market fluctuations, and a foreign student in the U.S. detained by authorities for engaging in disruptive political protests — all of which the media put their backs into with the hopes of turning public opinion against the administration.
It worked to some degree. On the made-up controversies mentioned, respondents who said they had heard about the story gave Trump a lower approval rating than those who said they hadn’t heard or had only heard very little, according to the Times.
But rather than consider that consuming excessively negative (and fake) news would logically lead a person to a more negative view, Igielnik suggested it’s a bigger problem that Trump’s approval numbers aren’t suffering more because a lot of people have obviously tuned her and her peers out after realizing how routinely deceptive their narratives are.
“[T]he blitz of news can be hard to follow even for the most engaged voters,” she wrote. “In his first 100 days, Mr. Trump signed more executive orders than any other modern president, part of a strategy to make changes at such velocity that people could not possibly pay attention to all of them.”
Or maybe people are catching on to the manipulative game the media play. It’s a tried and true tip: If the dying media are talking about “chaos” as it relates to Donald Trump, do yourself a favor and ignore it!
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