President Donald Trump has made accusations of “fake news” a regular tactic in his administration’s war against the media in general and CNN in particular. Now, the president’s allies are leaning into that assault with polling indicating popular distrust for CNN.
According to a new poll from pro-Trump nonprofit America First Policies, only 31 percent of Americans agree with CNN’s slogan that they are “the most trusted name in news.” Furthermore, when asked what network they found most trustworthy, a plurality of respondents—29 percent—favored Fox News over CNN, MSNBC, or BBC America.
The CNN question comes from AFP’s “National Tax Reform Survey,” details of which were shown to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ahead of publication. The nationwide poll of 1,200 respondents was conducted Sept. 15-17 by Republican-affiliated pollsters the Polling Company and National Research, Inc.
To the surprise of no one, CNN fared better among Democrats—with 48 percent agreeing they were the most trusted source—than among Republicans (14 percent) and independents (31 percent).
This isn’t the first time pollsters have detected that many American voters distrust CNN. Back in January, a Rasmussen poll found that only 33 percent of likely voters who watched CNN trusted its political coverage, while 36 percent said they did not trust it. On the other hand, trustworthiness can be a relative question: a July Axios poll found that Americans trust CNN more than President Trump.
The pollsters involved in the America First Policies poll are tight with the White House: The Polling Company is Kellyanne Conway’s old outfit, and National Research, Inc. is run by the Trump presidential campaign’s pollster. And the questions similarly seem skewed to give the group the answers they wanted: only 48 percent of Democrats might think CNN is the most trusted name in news, but that doesn’t mean 52 percent find them untrustworthy. Nevertheless, look for White House surrogates to begin using these figures as talking points in the days ahead.
