Fox News's independent polling isn't always in sync with the network's opinion shows. In July, for example, 63 percent of respondents said Donald Trump went "too far" when he said the minority congresswomen of "the squad" should "go back" to the countries they came from—even though Fox News has regularly tried to demonize Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. And in February, when a Fox News poll found that a whopping 70 percent of respondents supported raising taxes on people making more than $10 million a year, the hosts of one show blamed schools "teaching the idea of fairness" for inciting a "movement against capitalism."

Over the weekend, Fox News released a new public opinion poll on the impeachment of Donald Trump, finding that 50 percent of registered voters believe Trump should be impeached and removed from office, with 41 percent opposed. (And 4 percent seem to split the difference, saying Trump should be impeached but not removed.) That's a negligible increase from a similar poll in October that found 49 percent of voters supported impeachment and removal.

The reason that Fox News polling so often diverges from Fox News coverage is that it's conducted independently among members of the public, not among, say, Fox News viewers themselves. As often happens when public opinion doesn't mirror the network's talking points, it fell to the president's favorite show, Fox & Friends, to try to explain it away. Brian Kilmeade on Monday morning said the results "stunned" him: "The Fox poll came out—and I was stunned by this. This says 50 percent of the country want the president impeached. I was stunned to see that that’s the number, because I thought that things were trending away." Actually, 50 percent want Trump removed and 54 percent want him impeached, but regardless, Kilmeade declared it all a wash since Trump's approval rating squeaked up from 42 percent to 45 in the same poll.

Meanwhile, the president seemed annoyed with the poll, perhaps because it contradicts his unfounded claims that his poll numbers have gone "through the roof" since the impeachment hearings began. On Sunday, Trump tweeted, "The @foxnewPolls, always inaccurate, are heavily weighted toward Dems. So ridiculous - same thing happened in 2016. They got it all wrong. Get a new pollster!"

The president presumably meant to tag @FoxNewsPoll, since @FoxNewPolls is a parody account, tweeting questions like "Does Donald Trump know Tiffany's name?" and "Has Donald Trump read Don Jr.'s book?"

Despite Trump's complaints, the Fox News poll results aren't anomalous. Another poll out Monday from NPR/PBS/Marist finds 47 percent of adults supporting Trump’s impeachment and 48 percent opposing it. And a CBS/YouGov poll released over the weekend showed 46 percent of Americans saying Trump deserved to be impeached, while 39 percent said he did not. Kilmeade might have been less stunned if he got his news from places other than Fox.