The most recent ABC News/ The Washington Post overnight presidential poll is good news for President Trump. But, because the poll results didn’t fit their “Orange man bad” narrative both of the media giants spun the findings to try to make the President look bad.
According to ABC’s own findings, the President’s job approval rating among “voting age Americans” surged to 44% since April. One would have to dig deeper into the Washington Post’s reporting of the same findings to see why Trump’s opposition has to be worried.
The key factor is that the increase in Trump’s approval numbers was “among registered voters.” His disapproval rating also fell 4 points to 50% among the same group of voters.
Determined to ignore the cold hard facts found in its poll, ABC spun the numbers as a bad sign for Trump’s chances of reelection. Rachel Scott of ABC reported, “Our latest poll shows just how vulnerable the President could be ahead of the 2020 election. For starters, the majority of Americans, 53 percent still disapprove of the President’s performance in office. And that’s not the only thing casting a shadow over those high approval ratings.”
With a typical unflattering photo of President Trump, Scott ignored the markedly favorable numbers and added, “Even though most Americans oppose impeachment, 65 percent say the President has acted unpresidential.”
While ABC did all it could to spin things in Barack Obama’s favor in 2008 and 2012, Scott overlooked the implications of the “likely voters for Trump” numbers. Instead, she turned her attention to a “nationwide head-to-head matchup” that shows Joe Biden outperforming “President Trump by ten points.”
Ten minutes later in the Good Morning America broadcast, co-host Dan Harris noted the Democrats might face some trouble. Trump hater and Chief foreign affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz agreed, noting, “Yes, there are causes for concern in there for President Trump and yet, the economy is strong, his approval rating is up in our poll to a record, and heading into 2020, he definitely has the power of incumbency at his back. So, should that taken together be a wake-up call for Democrats?”
Despite the liberal media’s constant drumbeat of the danger of Trump’s trade wars, Raddatz couldn’t deny that Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy. ABC, however, failed to mention its own poll showed that 51 percent of the “likely voters” that responded support Trump’s handling of the economy.
Nicholas Fondacaro of Newsbusters calls attention to the way Raddatz deflected the good news for Trump but pivoted from the economy to the issue of immigration.
Raddatz insisted that immigration and not the economy is Trump’s signature issue. On that issue the ABC reporter said, “things certainly didn’t go well this week on that with those reports about conditions at those migrant facilities.”
While ABC and The Washington Post shied away from the most telling numbers in their poll, The Hill reported what they should have. With a headline that read, “Poll: Trump’s approval rating hits highest point of presidency,” the first poll number they discussed was his jump to 47 percent.
After admitting Trump approval ratings for the economy were stellar. Harris turned to Raddatz and said, “But you also have to look at immigration that’s his signature issue … is opponents are going to go after him on that in a very big way. They already are.”
The rest of GMA’s focus that morning was on immigration with little more said about the economy or the rise of “likely voters” having an overall approval for President Trump.
An honest observer must ask, “Had anyone not learned from the poll reporting fiasco of 2016?” Trump’s current numbers are no better than in 2016 and ahead of Obama at the same point in his presidency.
Paul Waldman, in an op-ed for The Washington Post, reminds us that “Trump has for the most part thrown out the playbook for incumbency. Another op-ed at The Post points out that “Trump won despite record-low favorable ratings.”
With Trump’s numbers continuing to rise its no wonder, House Democrats want to keep the Mueller report in the spotlight. Trump hating Democrat Jerold Nadler worked for weeks to get Mueller to agree to testify before his Judiciary committee, despite Mueller publicly saying he wouldn’t have anything new to add that wasn’t in his report.
Incidents like this, where the mainstream media goes to bat for the Democrats, trying to put President Trump in any kind of negative light, even if they are forced to ignore the facts, will only increase in frequency over the next year and a half leading up to the 2020 election. Chris Matthews of MSNBC, hosted a panel discussion last week that considered what would happen if Trump lost in 2020 and then refused to leave office. THAT’s the kind of ridiculous fake news that the mainstream media is pushing.
