Fox News keeps misleadingly telling its viewers Trump isn't a threat to Medicaid. A new poll helps to explain why.
Fox News personalities have continued to mislead their audience into thinking that President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans aren’t considering massive cuts to Medicaid, even as both chambers have advanced budget plans that would require billions in reductions to the program in order to offset tax cuts for the wealthy.
As Fox’s coverage suggests, those budget plans are unpopular even among Trump supporters. A new poll from MAGA-friendly firm Fabrizio Ward, whose co-founder served as Trump’s 2024 campaign pollster, found that a majority of Trump voters and two-thirds of swing voters oppose slashing Medicaid to fund Trump’s tax cuts. That level of disapproval helps explain why Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have spent the first several months of Trump’s second term claiming the health insurance program for low income individuals and people with disabilities is safe from Republican austerity measures, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics
News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors