If the 2024 election told us nothing else, it confirmed that the voters aren’t nearly as credulous as the Democrats and the corporate media believe them to be. Indeed, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center six weeks prior to the election, only 22 percent of American adults believed news organizations deal fairly with all sides. Ironically, considering that the news coverage of the Trump administration has been overwhelmingly negative, the primary beneficiaries of this brazenly biased reporting appear to have been President Donald J. Trump and the Republican party.
Despite questionable polls that purport to show President Trump and the GOP falling out of favor with the voters, both enjoy higher favorability ratings than the Democrats. According to RealClearPolitics, Trump currently stands at 45.4 percent. This does suggest that there has been some erosion, but it isn’t particularly alarming when compared with the abysmal ratings endured by prominent Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, for example, languishes at 28.0 percent. Likewise, the GOP’s favorability rating seems inauspicious at 42.2 percent until it is compared to the Democratic Party’s pathetic 33.8 percent rating.
Far more important than such ephemeral polling, however, is the increasing tendency of voters to support the GOP — at the federal and state level. In addition to controlling the White House and Congress, the Republicans also enjoy governing trifectas in 23 states according to Ballotpedia. The Democrats hold trifectas in 15 states. As recently as 2010, the GOP held only 9 state trifectas and the Democrats held 16. Can this reversal of fortune really be attributed to voter distrust of the corporate media? Megan McArdle says yes in the Washington Post and political scientist Yascha Mounk offers the same answer in a Substack essay:
Democracies depend on having a few widely trusted news outlets that can objectively inform the public about current affairs. The trust which citizens have traditionally placed in these outlets was premised on a belief that their journalists are at least striving to present events in an even-handed manner … The aspiration of many journalists to save democracy has not just proven counterproductive because it drove a big part of their readership away from mainstream outlets. It has also deprived Democrats of key facts they would have needed to make good strategic decisions.
This last point cannot be overemphasized. When “main stream” journalists decided it was more important to save democracy from the depredations of Donald Trump than to provide factual reporting to voters, they weren’t doing the Democrats any favors. The most obvious example involves their futile attempt to hide former President Biden’s accelerating cognitive decline. When the Wall Street Journal raised the issue they were attacked by the usual media suspects. CNN, for example, pompously declared, “The Wall Street Journal “owes its readers — and the public — better.” At MSNBC’s “MaddowBlog,” Steve Benen wrote:
I’ve never spoken to the incumbent president … That said, I know that (a) members of Congress from both parties who’ve interacted with him have praised his sharpness; (b) Biden’s recent work on Ukraine, border policies, and the Middle East suggest he’s tackling and implementing an expansive and ambitious agenda at the White House; (c) questions about Donald Trump’s mental stability seem far more salient right now; and (d) some GOP officials might want the public to believe the worst about Biden and his age, but I’m not inclined to take Kevin McCarthy’s and Mike Johnson’s word for it.
This is precisely the kind of “reporting” that does real damage to Democrats and the credibility of corporate media. The Journal’s article was published on June 4, 2024 — more than three weeks before Biden self-destructed in his debate with Donald Trump. Honest journalists would have regarded the WSJ piece as evidence that it simply wasn’t possible to keep a lid on the worst kept secret in Washington. Instead, they produced fictitious stories about “misleading videos” that encouraged the White House and congressional Democrats to keep lying about Biden’s condition. This is symptomatic of a deeply dysfunctional relationship.
Inevitably, as it does in all codependent relationships, the truth eventually catches up with the lies. Reality caught up with then-President Biden on June 27, 2024. The entire nation was able to see the truth in a venue his enablers couldn’t control. It was both shocking and sad. Predictably, his enablers in the corporate media and the Democratic Party claimed to be “stunned” by his meltdown. More lies. But, like all such people, they are unable to stop themselves. They just revise their fabrications to fit the needs of the moment. This is why most Americans disregard virtually everything the Democrats and the corporate media tell them.
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