June 16, 2019

Trump Just Said He Wants a Poll on the “Dishonest” News Media. Polls Show People Trust Him Less.

The facts speak for themselves.

Activists inflate a Donald Trump baby balloon in Los Angeles on October 18, 2018, ahead of a politically-themed convention.Richard Vogel/AP

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On Sunday morning, President Trump tweeted about the New York Times and the Washington Post, calling them “dishonest” and “deceitful,” while parroting his typical line of attack that he believes them to be the “Enemy of the People.” “A poll should be done on which…is worse,” he wrote.

Indeed, trust in the media is still hovering around its 2016 historic low—perhaps in part because of Trump’s own incessant assaults on the news. Nevertheless, trust in the media among American voters is still higher than trust in Trump.

“We have polled on whether people think the New York Times or Washington Post have more credibility or you, and you lose out 51-38 and 49-38 to them respectively,” the Public Policy Institute tweeted at Trump Sunday morning. Their findings have been backed up by several other polls in recent years. A Quinnipiac University poll from February 2017 showed that 52 percent of Americans said they trust the news media over Donald Trump to tell the truth about important issues, and only 37 percent reported that they trusted Trump more. Another Quinnipiac poll from September 2018 found that Trump’s numbers had dropped even lower: 54 percent of American voters trusted the media more than President Trump, and just 30 percent trusted Trump over the media.

Trump can trash the Times and the Post all he wants, but he’s only exposing himself when he does.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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