June 18, 2019

Trump Labels Fox News “Fake” and Claims “Something Weird Is Going on” at Network

Is the president turning on his favorite news source?

Ron Sachs/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump on Monday accused one of his favorite media outlets of spreading “fake news” after Fox News anchor Bret Baier reported on the network’s own polling that showed the president trailing or tied with a number of top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination. 

That survey, which showed Joe Biden leading Trump by 10 points, was the latest in a wave of negative polling for Trump ahead of the president’s official reelection launch event in Florida on Tuesday. 

While lashing out at Baier, Trump complained that Fox polls “are always bad for me” and that they had been in the 2016 election, as well. “Something weird going on at Fox,” he wrote.

After weeks of seething over the Mueller report, Trump was faced with new frustrations last week after the New York Times reported that the president’s internal numbers showed him trailing Biden in several key states. Despite denying the existence of the poll, the Trump campaign later fired the pollsters whose survey data had apparently leaked.

General election polls, this early in the game, are pretty meaningless. But then again, few things mean more to Trump than his own popularity. His fixation continued into Tuesday morning when he claimed, without evidence, that the media was purposely ignoring the large crowds gathering outside his upcoming rally in Florida. “People have never seen anything like it (unless you play a guitar),” he tweeted.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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