Trump's Numbers Rise with Both GOP & Dems as Media Immigration Attacks Backfire
Up until the surprise retirement announcement from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy sucked all the oxygen out of the liberal media, they had been intensely focused on negatively reporting the situation at the southern border.
That focus was on the temporary separation of illegal immigrant families after being detained for illegal entry into the country, a byproduct of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy that saw all illegal entrants charged and prosecuted for their crime.
The media coverage painted Trump as some sort of heartless and racist authoritarian dictator who hated brown children and even smeared government officials and immigration enforcement agents as Nazi leaders and stormtroopers carrying out the despicable orders of a tyrant.
But according to The Hill, that over-the-top hyperbole and rhetoric on the immigration either backfired or had no tangible effect on the electorate as Trump’s approval numbers actually rose in one particular poll while all of that media negativity was ongoing.
A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll conducted near the end of June showed that Trump’s approval rating had ticked up two points since May to 47 percent, near that poll’s previous high mark of 49 percent set last year.
The rise in the president’s overall approval rating included an astonishing 10-point gain among Hispanic voters, who one would presume based on media coverage would be the segment of society most averse to a “racist” president ripping brown families apart at the border.
Trump’s approval also rose six points among Republican voters and even ticked up four points among Democrats while dropping a similar amount among independent voters.
The pollsters suggested that the rise in Trump’s numbers were largely attributable to the strengthening economy and the seemingly successful summit in Singapore with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un on denuclearization and peace on the Korean peninsula, and were shocked that the immigration issue hadn’t hurt him as they’d predicted.
“(I’m) surprised that given the misstep on immigration that the president’s approval is holding steady or even increasing on the strength of the economy and the success of North Korea,” stated Mark Penn, a former Clinton White House official who is now co-director of the Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.
But perhaps Penn was looking at the issue wrong, as maybe most Americans didn’t view Trump’s enforcement of existing immigration laws as a “misstep,” but instead viewed the media’s insanely negative reporting of the issue as a “misstep” on the media’s part.
The liberal media have proven themselves over the past two years to be singularly focused on taking Trump down however possible, either through manufactured crises and made-up scandals or simply a constant drumbeat of negatively-themed coverage of everything said or done by his administration.
Indeed, while the poll found that Trump’s approval rating on the issues of immigration, foreign affairs and running the government was still “underwater” and less than 50 percent, those numbers were nevertheless improved over what they had been in previous months.
Another seemingly unrelated development that could have factored into Trump’s improved numbers in this particular poll is that fact that it was taken following the shockingly partisan refusal of a Virginia restaurateur to serve dinner to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family.
The poll also would have occurred following the disgraceful call for mob action and potential violence against Trump administration officials by Democrat California Rep. Maxine Waters, as well as the deranged threats against the families of Trump, Sanders and others by hateful liberal celebrities.
The liberal media, serving as the mouthpiece of the Trump-hating political left, has waged an incessant war against Trump that recently peaked in intensity over the immigration issue, and will no doubt peak again over some other top leftist issue in the coming weeks.
But at least with regard to this particular poll, the constant hair-on-fire freakouts of the media could actually be helping Trump by revealing just how biased and increasingly irrelevant the media truly is.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.