My RedState colleague Jeff Charles first reported yesterday on a poll showing that the public’s trust in the media is now at an all-time low.

This is no great revelation to folks whose political views are right of center and supported Donald Trump for re-election.  Those paying attention over the past four years witnessed first hand the shameful coordinated efforts of the media and newsroom denizens across the country to drive “narratives” with a single-minded purpose — to undermine the legitimacy and authority of Donald Trump as President.  They made no effort to hide the fact.

Well, there is a price to pay for such overt prejudice when an entire industry tries to justify its existence on the basis of the “public’s need to know.”  That price is now starting to come due.

The story in Axios reported on the results of a recurring poll that gauges the public’s view on the fairness and accuracy of media reporting.

The “top line” statement posed to the poll respondents for their reaction was phrased as follows:

“Journalists and reporters are purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”

Note the extreme nature of the language used in the statement to which respondents were being asked to agree or disagree with — “purposely trying to mislead” and “false or gross exaggerations.”

Those phrases were begging the respondents for a negative response.  But, 56% of all respondents AGREED with the statement as phrased.

A majority of Americans believe that the media — “journalists and reporters” — are purposely trying to mislead the public with false information.

That is the definition of propaganda.

Let that sink in — more than half the country believes the media is spreading propaganda under the guise of “informing” the public as part of its self-anointed mission.

By doing the math, we can see that 44% of the respondents disagreed with the statement. If you accept the generalization that 35-40% of the population would place themselves to the left of center politically in the country – the fact that only 44% of the population believes the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, and NPR, are not propaganda outlets does not strike a hopeful cord for the effectiveness of the media as the water-carrier for left-wing politicians.  They already have just about everyone they can reach — the existing left-of-center in this country believes them, but almost no one else does.

So when they cheerlead the left-wing policy advancements of the Hiden/Barris Administration — which they are already beginning to do — they will be largely “preaching to the already converted.”

This reality is likely linked to a new number out today from Rasmussen — upon entering office Joe Biden has an “approval” rating of 48%, with 45% “disapproving”.

Rasmussen runs a daily tracking poll on Presidential approval that is calculated as an average over three days.  So today’s number is the first Approval Rating for the Presidency of Joe Biden.

Biden’s numbers show lower approval than disapproval numbers among women (46-48%) and white voters (43-51%)

By comparison, Pres. Trump’s first approval rating in January 2017 was 56%, and Pres. Obama’s was 67% in 2008.

President Trump’s approval rating on his final day in office came in at 51% approval and 48% disapproval.

The seemingly obvious link is that the public does not desire the policy agenda that Hiden/Barris campaigned on and has begun to implement, and the public isn’t going to be persuaded in that regard by cheerleading from the press.

If anything, the cheerleading from a press that has discredited itself and lost the trust of those it wants to persuade is simply regarded as more propaganda meant to mislead.  The 56% are more likely to believe the opposite of what the press reports as “truth.”

What the press will try to champion as policy “successes” are likely to be suspected to be “failures” being dutifully covered up by a willing and complicit media.

Now that Pres. Trump has been “defeated,” much of the false reporting of the past 12 months will have to be undone.  Doomsayer proclamations about what might come from COVID-19 if the economy was to be opened again will need to be reversed so that the economy can be opened up again.

The threat of authoritarian government via Executive Orders and regulatory decision-making independent of Congressional input will be forgotten about so that the radical agenda pushed by a minority of activists on the extreme left-wing of the Democrat Party can make public policy notwithstanding a lack of popular support.

But I HOPE it’s too late for all that.  The media is going to want to begin to drive a new set of narratives about all the great things Joe Biden is in the process of achieving in his first 100 days but the ground might have already shifted for good in that regard.

The media drive the narrative for four years that it was a national imperative that Donald Trump not have a second term.  The Democrats were on the verge of not holding up their part until they “rallied” around a 78-year-old dementia sufferer because he happened to at one time have been the Vice President of a President they all still admire.

But the reality of who Joe Biden really is has not been lost on the public, nor has the public been fooled for the most part about what the activist wing of the Democrat party really hopes to achieve with their Trojan Horse President.

As his “One From Each Column” Cabinet of Clowns comes to be better known, and the policies being advanced via Executive Order begin to have an impact on the everyday lives of Americans, Joe Biden and the press will likely finding themselves talking only to each other.