President Donald Trump raged Thursday at Rupert Murdoch over a Fox News poll that gave him brutal approval numbers.
Trump alleged in a Truth Social post that the 94-year-old media mogul, who owns the reliably right-leaning network, “has told me for years that he is going to get rid of his FoxNews, Trump Hating, Fake Pollster, but he has never done so. This ‘pollster’ has gotten me, and MAGA, wrong for years.”
The president also seized on the chance to take a shot at another Murdoch-owned publication, The Wall Street Journal, for its critical editorials about his sky-high tariffs on China.
“Also, and while he’s at it, he should start making changes at the China Loving Wall Street Journal,” Trump said. “It sucks!!!”
Neither Fox News nor the Journal immediately returned the Daily Beast’s requests for comment.
The poll that enraged the president showed him with a 44 percent overall approval rating 100 days into his presidency—a point lower than the figure he posted at the same checkpoint in his first term. It was also below the mark Fox polling had found for former Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush after 100 days.
When it came to specific issues, Trump was similarly underwater. Among those polled, more disapproved than approved of how the president is handling foreign policy, immigration, and the economy.
Just 33 percent approved of Trump’s tariffs. The same amount approved of his approach to inflation.
The lone bright spot for Trump was border security, which was a separate question from immigration. Here, he posted 55 percent approval.
Discussing the data on air Wednesday evening, Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Brit Hume acknowledged that the numbers were not great for the president—but kept the door open for improvement.“My thought about this is this is not really unexpected in my view, Bret,” said Hume, the network’s chief political analyst, who explained that he believed many of the presidents biggest endeavors—like the tariffs and his push to end the Russia-Ukraine war—had yet to fully play out.
“There’s a lot of work to be completed, which if done successfully, I think would dramatically elevate his current approval rate,” Hume said.
“Yeah, a lot of balls in the air,” Baier agreed.
While Fox News’ editorial slant has historically favored Republicans, including Trump, its polls have garnered praise for their lack of political bias.
And it isn’t the first time the network’s results have angered Trump.
“My worst polls have always been from Fox,” he complained to reporters in Aug. 2019, after a survey showed him with 56 percent disapproval. “There’s something going on at Fox, and I tell you I’m not happy with it.”
For nearly 30 years, network’s polling division has been led by Dana Blanton, vice president of public opinion research, who authored Fox’s commentary on the poll released Wednesday.
The Los Angeles Times, in a 2019 piece looking inside Fox’s polls, reported that among her colleagues Blanton is “known for being methodical and inscrutable, offering no hint of her own political views.”
She told the paper that she intentionally avoids reading hate comments from livid Fox News readers when she writes up a data analysis piece about one of its polls.
Trump and Murdoch have long shared a close relationship, if an at-times contentious one.
Since Trump’s second term began, outlets owned by the conservative billionaire have seemed to up their criticism of the president—especially around his tariffs.
The Journal has published a string of scathing editorials about the president’s sweeping import taxes. On Tuesday, it called them “the biggest economic policy mistake in decades.”
Earlier this month, Trump was caught on camera reading a front-page story in the New York Post, also owned by Murdoch, that mocked him for golfing as his policies sent the markets cratering.
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