President Donald Trump’s penchant for occasionally saying things that are demonstrably untrue has eroded trust in the president, according to a poll conducted by Marist College for National Public Radio, which showed that only 37% of Americans trust the Trump administration.
But here’s the thing: Americans trust Congress and the news media even less than they trust Trump. According to the polls, only 30% of adults said they trust the media either “a good amount” or “a great deal.”
Meanwhile, 46 percent of Americans say they don't have very much trust in Congress, while 22 percent say they don't have any trust in the legislative branch. In fact, just 6 percent of Americans have a great deal of trust in Congress, while 23 percent say they have a good amount of trust in it.
When it comes to who trusts what, large disparities exist across party lines: 56% of Democrats say they trust the media, but that number falls to just 9% for Republicans, according to the data.
“How much Americans trust the Trump administration, the media and public opinion polls is deeply divided along partisan lines. Just 30 percent of all Americans have some degree of trust in the media, while a 37 percent plurality say they don't have any trust in the media. However, among Democrats, 56 percent say they trust the media, but only 9 percent of Republicans say they trust the press, while 59 percent say they don't trust it at all. Just over 1 in 4 independents say they trust the media, with 35 percent saying they don't trust the press at all and the same amount saying they don't trust the media very much.”
But will publishing these discouraging figures help prod these institutions into taking steps to earn back the public’s trust? Maybe, but probably not, because, as the survey found, 6 in 10 Americans say they don’t trust public opinion polls like this one.
“There's similar distrust of public opinion polls, which just more than 6 in 10 Americans say, to some degree, they don't trust. Half of Democrats, however, say they do, while just 28 percent of Republicans say they trust surveys. Thirty-four percent of independents say they trust public opinion polls, while 63 percent either don't have much trust or any trust in them.”
It seems the only US institutions that intelligence and law enforcement agencies like the CIA and the FBI engender much goodwill, with 60 percent saying they have some degree of trust in them.
Welcome to America in 2017: Where nobody trusts anything, or anyone, anymore.
via http://ift.tt/2uEqAme Tyler Durden