President Donald Trump’s combative relationship with the national news media has been a staple of his White House tenure, perhaps reaching a fever pitch in the wake of recent acts of anti-Semitic violence and attempted domestic terrorism.
Days after authorities discovered a string of pipe bombs addressed to prominent Democratic politicians, donors and anti-Trump celebrities and after a gunman took 11 lives during a shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, the president suggested that “The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People,” was to blame for the division in the country.
“There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news,” he said Monday on Twitter.
To a certain extent, a new Morning Consult/Politico survey suggests Trump’s criticism rang true for roughly two-thirds of Americans, although it shows a majority also says he has been a mostly divisive presence.
In the new Morning Consult/Politico poll, 64 percent of registered voters said the press has done more to divide the country than unite it since Trump took office, compared with 56 percent who said the same was true of the president. The poll of 2,543 voters was conducted Oct. 25-30, after news first broke of mail bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc’s attempted acts of politically motivated violence and amid news of a shooting by suspect Robert Bowers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
The view that the national news media has been a mostly divisive presence was shared among partisans: A plurality of Democrats (46 percent) said the national media has done more to divide than unite — about half the share of Democrats (88 percent) who said the same of Trump. Eight in 10 Republicans agree that the media has done more to divide, while a quarter of Republicans said Trump has been mostly divisive.
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