The Public Despises The Media, Which Is Good News For Hegseth
The corporate media failed thoroughly and consistently in 2024. First, it played along as a willing collaborator promoting the obvious lie that Joe Biden was cogent and capable. However, once their grand deception was revealed before a massive live audience at the Trump/Biden debate, they turned on Biden ferociously and facilitated a bloodless palace coup.
Then, the media mavens dutifully helped Democrat powerbrokers install Kamala Harris as nominee. These self-appointed “protectors” of democracy engaged in backroom dealings that would make a Chicago alderman blush, with full cover from a complicit press. For the next 100 days, the corporate media absolutely fawned over Harris, with hagiographic coverage and constant pro-Kamala propaganda. But those brazen and obvious PR efforts crashed and burned, in spectacular fashion, with Trump earning a mandate like no Republican has, since Ronald Reagan.
Accordingly, public trust in media plunges ever lower. New polling from my organization, the League of American Workers, reveals that an already-troubled press now sees its credibility smashed even further because of these systemic media failures during the 2024 election cycle.
This post-election review poll was conducted by TIPP Insights, a national survey of 1,550 voters at the end of November, and the survey sample split exactly equally between Trump and Harris voters. It reveals that Americans report a broad, supermajority consensus that the media is not trustworthy, and that its shameful tactics in 2024 actually backfired.
First, on the issue of systemic bias: by a giant +34% margin (61-27%), voters believe that the media “favored Kamala Harris’s candidacy against Donald Trump’s in the lead up to the election.” Among properly skeptical young voters, aged 18-24 years old, that margin of media doubters expands to a whopping +41% margin, with only 23% of young adults showing confidence that the press was NOT systemically biased into this November.
Even among Harris voters, a shocking 45% agree that the media was in the tank for Kamala. That kind of mass acknowledgment of media bias is bad enough, but there is an even worse revelation for the legacy media platforms: voters believe that the media’s bias in favor of Kamala Harris ultimately worked against her candidacy, by a wide +19% margin, 49-30%, with 21% unsure. Even 40% of self-identified Democrat voters agreed that the media’s bias backfired and actually harmed Harris.
Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the survey shows strong overall support for President Trump since his historic victory on November 5th. For example, by a +13% margin, citizens report their economic confidence “improved” vs. “worsened” since Trump won the election, 49-36%. Among middle income Americans, earning $50,000-75,000 per year, that margin widens to +18% (52-34%).
Conversely, public sentiment regarding Joe Biden sinks even further, post-election. Overall job approval for Biden is -20 percentage points underwater, with only 35% approval and 55% disapproval. Among Independent voters, Biden is -30% net, with only 29% approval of his performance. When asked if Biden and Harris are “helping or hurting your family,” a stunning 60% of men said “hurting” and only 30% say the current White House is “helping.”
Which brings up the issue of Trump’s White House plans and the slanted and dishonest campaigns against nominations for key posts, especially Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense. The foreign policy establishment of Washington has worked hand-in-glove with mainstream media for decades, from the Intelligence Community, to think tanks, to big defense firms. This whole corrupt cabal erupts at the idea of a warrior who refuses to endorse needless wars, and insists that the US military return to a focus on lethality, rather than politicized narratives and woke agendas.
The media’s tactics vs. Hegseth further showcase why the traditional Fourth Estate in American deserves so little regard from the masses of citizens. For instance, NBC published a hit piece vs. Hegseth alleging that anonymous workers at Fox News believe he has a drinking problem. Only, a chorus of his most prominent colleagues at Fox News completely contradicts those allegations vs. Hegseth. In fact, his TV partners very publicly went ON THE RECORD to praise Pete and forcefully deny the whispered allegations.
Even worse for NBC, those prominent on-air Fox personalities also say they never even heard from NBC. People like his co-host Will Cain had no chance to defend their colleague Hegseth in the original, bogus NBC reporting on the issue. A failure to even reach out to his very well-known TV co-stars reveals a collapse in journalistic ethics and standard practices. This failure by NBC is, at best, a massive journalistic oversight that undermines their entire report. At worst, it suggests something even more sinister: the very real prospect that NBC just concocted the entire smear attack.
But thankfully, President Trump stands by Pete Hegseth, and Pete will get his day in the “court” of public opinion, to defend his stellar record, and his America First vision for the Pentagon. Thankfully, my polling provides clear evidence that most Americans view the media with severe contempt. As such, their slanders and calumny matter less every passing day.
Steve Cortes is former senior advisor to President Trump and JD Vance, former commentator for Fox News and CNN, and president of the League of American Workers, a populist right pro-laborer advocacy group.
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the author’s Substack column and is reprinted here with permission.