President Donald Trump likes to bash the media’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic ad nauseum, but a new Pew poll shows a majority of America isn’t buying what he’s selling.
According to the poll, 54 percent of Americans believe the media has been doing a “good” or “excellent” job with its response to the outbreak.
Trump’s response rating falls six points below that figure in the same poll, with 48 percent of Americans saying that they believe the President’s handling of the coronavirus was “good” or “excellent.”
The poll surveyed 11,537 American adults from March 19 through 24, and has a margin of error of +/- 1.5 percent.
Trump and his allies frequently spin his flailing response to the outbreak as an anti-Trump media conspiracy. The President often attacks the reporters attending his daily White House briefings on COVID-19, and right-wing media figures have participated in his efforts to delegitimize the mainstream media.
In an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Wednesday, Attorney General Bill Barr accused the media of being on “a jihad” to “discredit” hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that Trump claims to be effective against the coronavirus even though no hard data proves it.
