A new opinion poll from Reuters/Ipsos shows that despite Donald Trump’s repeated claims of “fake news,” Americans have increasing faith in the media and decreasing faith in the current president.
The poll of more than 14,300 people released on Tuesday shows that the percentage of adults who said they had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the press rose to 48 percent in September, compared to 39 percent in November.
The increase comes after Trump branded the entire industry as the “enemy of the American people,” Reuters reported.
Meanwhile, those who said they had “hardly any” confidence in the press dropped to 45 percent from 51 percent.
On the flip side, the poll found that in late January, 52 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the new president’s executive branch. But by May, that had dropped to 51 percent, and to 48 percent in the poll released Tuesday.
When Barack Obama was closing out his presidency in November, 57 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the outgoing POTUS.
The poll also found that the shift in trust was not simply a partisan reaction to a Republican president, according to Reuters.
From January to September, the percentage of people who had a “great deal” or “some” confidence in the executive branch dropped 6 percentage points among Republicans and 3 points among Democrats; those who expressed similar levels of confidence in the media rose 3 points this year among Republicans and 11 points among Democrats.