President Donald Trump before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington en route to to Mar-a-Lago, Fla., on March 23, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Commentary: Trump’s Approval Rating Keeps Rising, Despite Manufactured Scandals

Commentary

A new CNN poll published on March 26 showed that Trump’s approval rating is now 42 percent, the highest in 11 months and up 7 percent from a CNN poll released on Feb. 26.

Other polls have shown a similar picture.

The right-leaning Rasmussen reports, which came in second for accuracy in predicting the result of the 2016 presidential election, shows Trump’s approval rating at 46 percent.

The rise of Trump’s approval rating comes amid a slew of media-fabricated scandals against him, the main one involving Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels.

For weeks now, media organizations have provided her with a platform and have hyped up her unsubstantiated allegations against Trump.

The Media Research Center found in January and February this year that 91 percent of all evening news on the major networks was negative on Trump, up from 90 percent in 2017.

Yet, despite the onslaught of negative media coverage, which consists of both spin and plain lies, Trump’s approval rating keeps on rising.

And it’s not for a lack of trying on the media’s part to influence public opinion on Trump. An analysis of a day of coverage by CNN by the Media Research Center found that the station was almost entirely dedicated to Trump, spending only 15 percent of its time on covering news topics that were not related to the president.

This shows us that legacy news outlets don’t have the influence they once had and that they are increasingly operating within their own bubbles. Their ability to control the narrative has been severely undercut by the rise of social media networks and the internet.

Trump’s rising approval rating also shows us that Americans see in Trump a president who is keeping promises and getting things done.

Unemployment is at a 17-year low, with African American and Hispanic unemployment levels at their lowest in recorded history, and the stock market has reached historic highs. Trump is tackling national security threats head-on, such as China’s theft of intellectual property, North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear programs, and cartels smuggling drugs into the United States.

The most prominent example of a fabricated media scandal has been the narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election. For over a year, media have promoted the theory despite an investigation conducted by the former director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama finding no evidence of collusion. A year-long investigation by the House intelligence committee, concluded on March 22, found no evidence of collusion.

Having lost the ability to control the narrative, the legacy news outlets are now spinning stories out of control, rendering their chances of regaining people’s trust ever more bleak.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.