Gallup Poll Disaster for Media: Concern Over Russia Ranked 33rd
The mainstream media is horribly out of touch with the American people.
That’s the best conclusion that can be drawn after a new poll from the well-respected Gallup organization revealed that despite wall-to-wall coverage and liberal hand-wringing over Trump and Russia, voters just aren’t that bothered.
Over the last week, much ink was spilled over President Donald Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin, the controversial leader of Russia.
Both mainstream and left-leaning outlets — can anybody tell them apart? — tried desperately to paint the diplomatic visit as a blunder for Trump, and tried to tie it to a larger narrative of Russia influencing the 2016 election while controlling Trump.
That claim is not proven, and is flimsy at best. Still, the old guard media flew into a tizzy. Time Magazine morphed the faces of Putin and Trump into one on its latest cover, not-so-subtly implying that the former KGB agent and New York billionaire were one and the same.
Other voices implied that Trump was a traitor who needed to resign or be forcibly removed from office for, er, acting as the chief diplomat and meeting with a powerful country on neutral ground.
The media hysteria over phantom Trump-Russia connections goes back to the 2016 election, but there’s one big problem: Americans just aren’t accepting the narrative.
Despite mainstream outlets hammering the Russia angle almost endlessly, voters have basically shrugged and turned their focus to other things.
A recent Gallup poll tells the story. The research group asked a broad sample of Americans what they thought was the “most important problem” facing America today. To the chagrin of liberals, the results are good for Donald Trump, and appallingly bad for the Russian boogeyman narrative.
As of June 2018, the vast majority of citizens named non-economic problems as the most important issues facing the nation. Of those, “dissatisfaction with government” ranked the highest, while “immigration / illegal aliens” was a close second.
Both of those issues potentially bode well for Trump and conservatives in the 2018 and 2020 elections.
And the Russian narrative? It barely made the list. Less than 0.5 percent of respondents to the Gallup poll named “the situation with Russia” as their top concern. A staggering 32 issues, ranging from unemployment to crime, all ranked higher on the list of concerns than Russia.
Now, it should be noted that the recent meeting between Trump and Putin happened after the latest Gallup results were collected. If the Helsinki summit influenced the public’s concern over Russia, it would be reflected on next month’s polling.
With that said, one look at how Americans viewed the Russian problem over the last seven months reveals that they have been largely apathetic to the media narrative and even hysteria on the issue.
Between December 2017 and June 2018, at no point did “the situation with Russia” rise above one percent of responses for the most important issue. Barring some kind of smoking gun evidence linking Trump to the Putin regime, it’s a safe bet that a diplomatic meeting with the Russian president did not suddenly change the minds of voters.
What this shows is that the mainstream media is living in a bubble, and it seems to be getting further removed from reality every day. While they’re wailing about Russia and openly implying that Trump is a traitor to the nation, heartland Americans are seeing through the facade.
In the end, that could be what drives the leftist media most crazy: They’re just not relevant anymore. The American people are doing something much more powerful than fighting the one-sided media narrative. They’re simply ignoring it.
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