It's about time someone on cable news said the truth. Trump's "support" among voters is far less than 25% of the electorate, and it's shrinking. But you wouldn't know that listening to the mainstream media's obsession with "The elusive Trump Voter." (This isn't Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, people.) How about paying some attention to the needs and desires of the majority who find Trump to be illegitimate and terrible? That doesn't get ratings does it kthxbye.
And thanks to Lawrence O'Donnell and John Heilemann for having this conversation:
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: A new poll shows that the president's approval rating is far below a majority. But 88% of Republicans say they support the president. Unfortunately, in most of the media, they never do the math on what that actually means, since only 26% of voters are Republicans.
JOHN HEILEMANN: Here we go.
O'DONNELL: 88% of 26% is something like 23%...
HEILEMANN: Yeah.
O'DONNELL: ...of voters support Donald Trump.
HEILEMANN: The Republican party is shrinking. Man, you talk about getting abused by Fox News. I'm going to get abused for saying that.
O'DONNELL: That's just a numerical fact.
HEILEMANN: This will be the third time today I talk about this. We spend a lot of time on the Trump supporter. It is the way to try to understand what Trump is doing. It explains a lot of his tactical maneuvers and his long-term plan to try to survive the onslaught he is facing right now on a variety of legal fronts. But in the end, the country is not with Donald Trump.
O'DONNELL: Right.
HEILEMANN: And we normally, in every election I have ever covered, we focus on moderate voters, swing voters. We focus on all kinds of voters that make that difference in elections. Now all we talk about is the Trump base, the Trump voters. Instead of focussing on the fact that the ABC News Poll today said 75% of the American people are against him attacking NATO. The vast majority is against Trump on these major issues. We have to focus on his supporters because it is so important to what he's doing in the White House. We also have to focus on the bigger picture, which is that the country is not with him.
