President Donald Trump’s approval rating is now exactly the same as that of former President Barack Obama at the end of his first year in office.
The big difference between Trump and Obama, however, is the nearly non-stop negative media coverage Trump has received.
An analysis of more than 3,000 stories during the first 100 days of his presidency across 24 different media organizations found that reporting on Trump has been the most negative compared to other presidents over the past 25 years.
The research shows that only 5 percent of media reporting during the period was positive. Sixty-two percent of stories were negative, and 33 percent were neither positive nor negative.
By comparison, coverage of President Barack Obama during the same time period was 42 percent positive and 20 percent negative. For President George W. Bush, the number was 22 percent positive and 28 percent negative. And for President Bill Clinton, it was 27 percent positive and 28 percent negative.
“The evaluations of President Trump were far more negative and less positive than those of his predecessors,” wrote the Pew Research Center.
Besides negative media reporting, Trump has also faced unproven accusations that he had conspired with the Russian government to win the election, which are likely to have affected his approval rating.
Despite a year of investigations into the accusations, no proof of collusion has been found as of yet.
The 35-page report, marked as classified, relies almost exclusively on Kremlin-linked sources. These include a senior Kremlin official, a senior Russian official in the Russian Foreign Ministry, and a former top-level Russian intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin.
Law professor Ronald Rychlak, a leading expert on Russian disinformation operations, said the Trump dossier had all the hallmarks of a classic Russian disinformation campaign.
“It does seem to fit with some of the crazy ideas that have come from the high levels within the Russian government,” said Rychlak, in an earlier interview.
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