Trump Just Said He Wants a Poll on the “Dishonest” News Media. Polls Show People Trust Him Less.

The facts speak for themselves.

Activists inflate a Donald Trump baby balloon in Los Angeles on October 18, 2018, ahead of a politically-themed convention.Richard Vogel/AP

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On Sunday morning, President Trump tweeted about the New York Times and the Washington Post, calling them “dishonest” and “deceitful,” while parroting his typical line of attack that he believes them to be the “Enemy of the People.” “A poll should be done on which…is worse,” he wrote.

Indeed, trust in the media is still hovering around its 2016 historic low—perhaps in part because of Trump’s own incessant assaults on the news. Nevertheless, trust in the media among American voters is still higher than trust in Trump.

“We have polled on whether people think the New York Times or Washington Post have more credibility or you, and you lose out 51-38 and 49-38 to them respectively,” the Public Policy Institute tweeted at Trump Sunday morning. Their findings have been backed up by several other polls in recent years. A Quinnipiac University poll from February 2017 showed that 52 percent of Americans said they trust the news media over Donald Trump to tell the truth about important issues, and only 37 percent reported that they trusted Trump more. Another Quinnipiac poll from September 2018 found that Trump’s numbers had dropped even lower: 54 percent of American voters trusted the media more than President Trump, and just 30 percent trusted Trump over the media.

Trump can trash the Times and the Post all he wants, but he’s only exposing himself when he does.

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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