O Little Poll of Washington...

A popular Christmas carol is “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” In keeping with the Christmas season, and the ongoing efforts by the Washington, D.C. elites and ruling classes to destroy anything and everything related to President Trump, it’s time to review some current opinion polls.

Rasmussen Reports, acknowledged by media mavens as, “one of the most accurate polling operations in the 2016 election” has a daily presidential tracking poll. Not only for the current president, but also for the last one. It generally shows middle of the road rankings for President Trump, as it did for President Obama, with some positive ones.

But many news organizations fall under President Trump’s moniker of “Fake News” including the Washington Post and CNN. A recent Washington Post opinion piece happily declared, as if finding a pony under the Christmas tree, “As Trump slides in a new poll, reality begins piercing the bubble.”

Screengrab, Washington Post

They cite a CNN poll showing Trump with a 39 percent approval rating. This was based on a random sample of just over a thousand adults. Are they likely to vote? Registered to vote? American citizens? Or just random adults who happened to answer the phone when CNN was calling? It's not easy to tell from the information given.

How does this poll compare to Rasmussen, the most accurate pollster? Rasmussen conducts a daily poll of likely U.S. voters, rather than a poll of random people who simply answer a telephone.

Friday, December 14 was their most recent polling date. President Trump had a 48 percent total approval rating. This number has been hovering in the mid- to high 40s, to low 50s, for most of the past year, despite the nonstop negative news barrage from the media and continued claims that everyone hates Trump and regrets voting for him.

How did the media’s favorite, Barack Obama, the smartest guy in the room, the ultimate diplomat with the sharp crease in his slacks, fare in the same poll at the same point in his presidency? CNN may forget but the internet remembers.

On December 14, 2010, exactly eight years ago, then President Obama had a total approval number of 45 percent, 3 points lower than Trump.

How could this be? Media coverage of President Obama was mostly positive, compared to media coverage of President Trump which was almost all negative.

Trump, his family, and anyone who ever knew him or worked with him, finds themselves under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the New York State Attorney General, and House Democrats, all eager to indict and impeach the duly-elected president because they don’t like him.

New York Attorney Gen.-elect Letitia James says she plans to launch sweeping investigations into President Trump, his family and "anyone" in his circle who may have violated the law. https://t.co/vgFqDFBTyf

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) December 16, 2018

The unwarranted and partisan investigations into Trump continue and are ramping up. No one was investigating Obama and his associates despite a list of scandals eclipsing anything Trump may have done. Along with investigations, media cranks continue to commission statistically weak polls, designed solely to influence rather than reflect popular opinion.

Why are they doing this? The midterms are over with the next election almost two years away. The answer is simple: Trump’s enemies have nothing else with which to hurt him.

He remains popular with half the country despite a nonstop two-year effort to separate Trump supporters from Trump. Robert Mueller’s witch-hunt has gone nowhere. Sure, he has some indictments or plea deals. Indictments of Russians who will never see the inside of a U.S. court room. Plea deals from Trump associates to crimes committed before the Trump campaign or presidency, having nothing to do with Trump except for the unfortunate and unfair fact that those indicted happened to be in Trump’s orbit. Or else process crimes for not accurately remembering two-year-old details. If Hillary Clinton was president, no one would care a whit about Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, or Jerome Corsi.

The latest outrage against Trump is that he paid two women for signing nondisclosure agreements. Just as candidate Obama did with his embarrassing pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright. CNN political hack Kristen Powers believes these payments, before Trump was even a candidate for president, are somehow relevant.

She said, “Yeah, I don’t believe that the average Trump voter actually knew a lot of this about Donald Trump.” All because her former network, Fox News, didn’t cover it.

Bull. Everyone knew about Donald Trump, his two previous marriages, and his randy lifestyle. He was elected despite all that. For those who didn’t know, the Access Hollywood tapes made his past quite clear. Few voters missed the nonstop coverage of that October surprise.

Yet Trump is still here and at around 50 percent in the polls. How can this be? This is what the media and establishment ask themselves every day. They throw kryptonite at Superman Trump and instead of weakening him, he simply grows stronger.

It’s his approval numbers they want to weaken, although thus far they have been unsuccessful. So now it’s time to lie, to make up polls that reflect their desire to separate Trump supporters from Trump.

They have two years until the next election and are wasting no time starting their mission today.

Their polls support their biases and beliefs, having little basis in reality. It's pretty obvious this is a bid to bolster their echo chamber, through calls to arms to bring down a president, solely because they don’t like him. And by hook or by crook, they will institute regime change, just as the U.S. has called for in countries around the globe. This time it’s in the United States.
One might say emotions cloud judgment. Or emotions cloud logic. That’s certainly the case in the modern media world. Fortunately, there are honest and legitimate pollsters, such as Rasmussen, still in the business of assessing rather than shaping opinion. For the rest of the media, however, there are the less accurate but more pleasing polls and pollsters, and their media sponsors will remain undeterred by facts, continuing to bow to bogus polls.

Despite it all, Trump is still standing, pushing his agenda forward, earning the support of half the country. Borrowing again from the Christmas carol, “Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting Light.”

Or said another way, where there was once darkness, there is now light.

Thankfully there are a few media organizations willing to buck the anti-Trump bandwagon and report fairly, without malice or bias. May their light continue to shine well beyond the Christmas season. 

Brian C Joondeph, MD, MPS, a Denver based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook,  LinkedIn and Twitter.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.

Image credit: YouTube screen grab with additions by Monica Showalter.