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What Does Biden’s Dismal Approval Rating Say About the Activist Media?

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

President Joe Biden’s approval ratings continue to sink deeper into the toilet, and it does not appear he will be able to turn things around anytime soon. Indeed, his turd of a presidency continues to stink up the joint despite an adoring activist media, which has unsuccessfully tried to mask its scent with copious amounts of Febreze.

As RedState reported, a Quinnipiac University poll revealed, among other things, that only 33 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s performance while a whopping 53 percent thinks he’s about as useful as a water gun in a gunfight. These results show a three-point decrease in approval since November.

Fox News reported:

Biden’s approval rating hovered in the low- to mid-50s during his first six months in the White House. But the president’s numbers started sagging in August in the wake of Biden’s much-criticized handling of the turbulent U.S. exit from Afghanistan and following a surge in COVID-19 cases this summer among mainly unvaccinated people.

The plunge in the president’s approval was also fueled by the surge since the summer in consumer prices and, to a lesser degree, the surge this year of migrants trying to cross into the U.S. along the southern border with Mexico.

Quinnipiac’s poll also revealed that 50 percent of respondents believed Biden was performing as well as expected, while 39 percent said he is doing worse. Only 7 percent indicated he exceeded expectations.

“A rocky start for President Biden gets him low grades on his year one report card,” Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy observed.

Interestingly enough, participants were split on which party they wanted to control Congress. About 43 percent indicated they wanted to see the GOP win control of the House, while 42 percent favored Democrats. In the Senate, 45 percent backed the Republicans while 41 percent supported Democrats.

President Biden’s approval ratings are lower than former President Donald Trump’s at this point in his presidency. What is remarkable about this is the fact that Trump did not enjoy the allegiance of the activist media at any point while he was in office. Indeed, the Democrats’ Ministry of Propaganda pulled out all the stops to smear him at every turn, so it is not surprising that his approval was low.

However, Biden is a different story. With the exception of the Afghanistan fiasco and some complaints about transparency here and there, the activist media has refused to say an unkind word about their dear leader. Indeed, they have spent far more time smearing his opponents than holding him accountable. Since he took office, the press has acted as his loyal attack dog, protecting him at all costs.

In light of this, it is notable that Biden’s approval is so low despite the media carrying water for him. Perhaps this reality is a reflection of the level of influence the Fourth Estate still possesses. It seems to indicate they are not quite as influential as they were previously.

A new report from The Daily Mail appears to bolster this theory. The news outlet reported that CNN’s viewership has plummeted by 90 percent from this time last year. “The network averaged just 548,000 viewers during the week of January 3, a precipitous drop to the nearly 2.7 million viewers from the same week in 2021,” the author wrote.

But CNN is not the only activist media network whose viewership is flailing in the wind. “MSNBC lost 67 percent of its total audience last week, 80 percent of which was among its key demographic,” according to The Daily Mail.

Fox News, by way of contrast, outdid the other two outlets for its Jan. 6 coverage. The Mail noted that the network “was also the no. 1 ranked cable news network during President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ anniversary remarks.”

To put it simply, left-leaning activist media networks are performing about as well as Don Lemon on an IQ test. The fact that their viewership has declined so significantly should be seen as a sign that America has lost even more trust in our vaunted Fourth Estate. The public is not being fooled as easily as it has in the past, and Biden’s abysmal approval ratings are just one of several indicators demonstrating this.

Of course, this is not to say the activist media does not still wield a tremendous level of influence. Mainstream outlets can still effectively promote politically-skewed narratives like the professional propagandists they are. But if they are losing viewers and ratings at this rate, it’s worth speculating that if they don’t change course, they will soon lose whatever scrap of credibility they have left.

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