A majority of voters think President Donald Trump is tearing the country apart, according to a new Fox News poll, but there are some other findings buried in the poll that are even more shocking.
Fox News found that 56 percent of people believe Trump is tearing the country apart compared to 33 percent who believe the president is drawing the country together—falling in line with other polls that show a deep disapproval rating of Trump’s first few months in the White House.
However, one question, in particular, was striking in the wake of the deadly violence that erupted in Charlottesville, Virginia, after white supremacists held a rally in the college town earlier this month.
Trump came under fire for repeatedly condemning violence in Charlottesville on “both sides,” which was largely seen as softening his denouncement of white supremacists. The Fox News poll found that most voters disagree with Trump’s assessment, with 52 percent blaming white supremacists and only 19 percent saying both white supremacists and counterprotesters were to blame. (Just 33 percent of self-identified Trump voters blame both sides.) Seventeen percent primarily blamed the counterprotesters.
According to the poll, 40 percent of people believe the media poses a “greater threat” to the United States than white supremacists—including an overwhelming 75 percent of Trump voters. Conversely, 80 percent of people who voted for Hillary Clinton believed white supremacists are a larger threat.
Similarly, the poll found that people believe Trump dislikes the media more than white supremacists by a 70 to 13 percent margin.
The notion that Trump supporters have such low support for media institutions isn’t shocking. After all, the president did brand the press as a whole as the “enemy of the American people.” Trump has consistently fed into the right’s distrust of the media by calling stories he does not like “fake news” and has even tacitly encouraged violence against the press at his 2016 campaign rallies.
The rest of Fox News’ poll painted a troubling picture for the president. Only 41 percent of people believe Trump “respects racial minorities,” 56 percent of people disapproved of his response to Charlottesville, and the number of people in support of Trump’s plan to build a border wall dropped from 50 percent shortly after the election to just 39 percent.
Fox News polled 1,006 registered voters over landlines and cellphones from Aug. 27 to Aug. 29. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
