Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Matt Gertz: Always good to be back.
Gertz: Sure. I think there’s three main ways that people at Fox have been responding to these poll results. One is by claiming that the polls are fake altogether. This is the angle that we saw early in the week on Laura Ingraham’s show. She had pollster Matt Towery, and he explained that the polls from The New York Times and from ABC hadn’t polled a high enough percentage of Trump 2024 voters, according to him. And because of that, there’s just no possible way they could be right. “He’s not in free fall,” Towery said. “He’s had a little bit of slippage because he’s doing a lot. He’s breaking a lot of eggs to make an omelet, but he’s not dropping in any significant way.”
Gertz: Yeah. Fox News hosts can’t say that the polls are fake because of course Fox’s own polls are very bad news for Donald Trump’s approval ratings. Brian Kilmeade on Fox and Friends took a swing at it. He claimed, “When you look at the 100 days of Trump, the problem with the 100 days and looking at the polls, this format and his agenda is not built for 100 days.” Basically, he says the premise is flawed. You can’t even look at Donald Trump’s poll ratings right now because that’s just not what his agenda is. His agenda is for the long term. He only continued, “He’s redoing the base. He is framing out the house. A lot of it was rotted, and now he is replacing it. There’s not a lot of glory in framing out a house.” I have to say the image of Donald Trump trying to build a structure of some kind with tools is a pretty choice. But for Kilmeade, Trump is rebuilding. He’s got a plan and he’s going to get these great trade deals and pass his tax cuts and then the approval ratings are going to soar.
Sargent: Well, yeah, there was another interesting argument on Fox News from contributor Ari Fleischer. He said, “The base will not crack,” and added, “The base is solid for Donald Trump.” Fleischer said that the base will give him plenty of leeway because, again, he’s supposedly taking on these big consequential issues. Now, I don’t know how solid the base is for Trump. Note that the Marist poll finds that among rural voters, Trump’s approval has sunk to almost parity, 46–45, which is just stunning given historical rural support for Trump. And the CNN poll found that more than a quarter of voters who approve of Trump say his policies have increased costs on them, and 41 percent of those who approve of him say it’s likely we’re going into a recession next year. So I don’t know, Matt, when the tariffs start biting more, does he start to lose more support from the base, or not?
Sargent: I just want to underscore for listeners what you just said, which is basically that a number of Fox personalities are deceiving their viewers about what the polling is showing, essentially saying, No, none of that polling can possibly be right, including our own polling. That can’t possibly be right because Trump is a smashing success. But their own base is calling into these shows and saying, Well, this is a disaster for us. Now I think probably a lot of those people still approve of Trump, but the dynamic is still as I say it is, right? The customer base, the rank and file who are supposed to be enthralled to Trump are starting to see cracks and starting to see problems, right?
Sargent: Well, that’s for sure. We’ve talked a lot about the Fox News poll, so I just want to clarify that the Fox poll itself had Trump’s approval at 44 percent with 55 percent disapproving. Not quite as bad as other polls, but pretty bad, especially given the fact that Fox also had only 33 percent approving of Trump’s tariffs while 58 percent disapprove. Matt, I’ve been wondering, is there a split at Fox here where the “news” side does talk about Fox’s own numbers to some degree while maybe Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and the other supercharged MAGA personalities don’t? How often do those MAGA types talk about bad Fox News polling for Trump?
Sargent: Well, Trump has been raging at Rupert Murdoch and at Fox News over the bad polling; he does bring it up from time to time. As you point out, Stephen Miller has openly called on Fox News to fire its pollster. I guess Trump wants to sic the FBI on Fox News’s pollster or something like that. Can you talk about this dynamic? Because I’m really curious. What happens within Fox News when something like that takes place? I’ve got to think it’s like a lightning bolt hitting Fox headquarters when Trump does that. What are the incentives internally at Fox for keeping their pollster and what are the incentives in the other direction? How does that all play out?
Fox News has seen anyone at the network who’s willing to be a dissident even some of the time leave or be fired over the years, so what’s left for Donald Trump to criticize apparently is the network’s pollster. And the polling operation, as far as I’ve heard and as far as I’ve read, is quite reputable. Their numbers seem to move pretty closely to what we see from other mainstream pollsters. The one critique that I’d make is you will, from time to time, see questions in the polls that seem really geared to finding results that the evening “screamfests” can talk about. But the numbers do seem generally on track with what you see from other pollsters—and that is unacceptable to Donald Trump. The idea of the network that he loves so much—that he treats as such a propaganda outlet—occasionally allowing viewers to see that he is not as popular as he would like to be is unacceptable. And so it must be destroyed, as far as Donald Trump is concerned.
Gertz: I think they’re probably pretty terrified. The combination of that budget and the follow-up of the reconciliation bill that they’re planning, which will include massive cuts to Medicaid in order to finance huge tax cuts for the rich, is just political suicide if you’re a Republican in a district that Trump has not carried by a whopping margin. And even then, they must start running into trouble.
Sargent: It sure is. Well, let’s try to bring these two strands together. Like I said at the outset, I think the real game here that you’re seeing on Fox News is that they’re really trying to keep that floor as high as possible. They know Trump is losing independence in droves right now. Cost of living crisis is huge for independence. The rule of law stuff is actually really huge for independence as well; we’re seeing large majorities of independence opposing even some of the lawless stuff on immigration. So it’s all keeping that floor high. It’s what Ari Fleischer said on Fox, The base won’t crack. That’s how they keep the numbers somewhere in the 40s, somewhere manageable for the midterms.
Gertz: Yeah, it’s just a really difficult morass for them. And most of what they’re trying to do is avoid talking about it. So you saw the other day, Donald Trump came out, basically declared himself the Grinch, and said, As a result of the tariffs, instead of getting your kid 20 dolls, they might only have two dolls, and they’ll be more expensive. That’s just not a message that will sell to anyone who is not a total sycophant. Anyone who has any sense of political realities will be able to say, That’s obviously bad. And Fox basically ignored it. They just got away from it as quickly as possible. The only time there was really discussion on any of the opinion shows was when Jessica Tarlov, the Democrat on The Five, brought it up—and the Republican co-host just bolted. They did not want any part of a discussion about that. And that, I think, is what we’re going to see.
Sargent: Matt Gertz, it’s always great to talk to you, man. Thanks for coming on.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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