How low can he go?
“You don’t want to hit a record low two weeks out from Election Day,” CNN political director David Chalian said on “CNN News Central” this morning.
But that’s what President Trump has done, registering a record low approval rating of 32% in CNN’s final pre-midterm poll.
“Among his party faithful, he’s also at a record low,” Chalian reported, with 74% approval among Republicans, down from 88% when he returned to office last year.
The eye-opening polling data came out this morning. “Younger Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are particularly sour on Trump’s presidency and the state of the country,” CNN’s Jennifer Agiesta, Ariel Edwards-Levy and Edward Wu wrote in this recap.
That finding immediately made me think about the “manosphere” podcasters who rooted for Trump in 2024 but have turned against him amid the war in Iran and economic concerns.
There are lots of other potential connections between presidential approval ratings and broader media trends. Consider how Fox News has distanced itself from Trump a bit as his approval has eroded. And how anti-Trump media brands like The Bulwark and Democracy Docket have gained subscribers in Trump 2.0.
When the share of Americans who say they “strongly approve” of Trump stands at just 13%, “down 17 points from Trump’s last midterms,” it’s easy to see why MAGA media isn’t minting many new stars, and why Truth Social isn’t gaining much market share. (More on that below.)
Trump’s weak approval rating “is a huge warning sign for his party” heading into the midterms, Chalian said in this six-minute digital video about the poll findings.
“Amid all the negativity about Trump, though, a sizable share of voters say they don’t think the country would be better off if Democrats won control of Congress either,” CNN’s polling team wrote.
>> The New York Times is also out with a new national Times/Siena poll this morning…
Trump “has talked about replacing the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room with an indoor swimming pool,” the NYT’s Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan reported yesterday, building on recent reporting from the WSJ. They say the “highly symbolic” move has been on Trump’s mind for months, and “a growing number of people around him favor the idea.”
Steven Cheung’s response: “All options remain on the table, and we will make an announcement when appropriate.” Here’s a gift link to the full story. I would just note that these threats date all the way back to 2016, and have never been acted on. If the president does follow through now, it will look like a rageful reaction to his own unpopularity, among other things…
One day after I reported on that new Ted Boutrous letter to the Justice Department threatening further legal action if the White House keeps excluding CNN from Air Force One, the White House is at it again.
Today is CNN’s turn to fulfill both in-town and out-of-town TV pool duties, but the White House press office left the network off the list for Trump’s trip to South Carolina, so as a result there will be no pooled TV coverage of the trip.
Boutrous said he needs to hear back from the administration by Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern, or CNN “will be forced to pursue additional judicial relief…”
Catherine Herridge “is now on her last appeal to the Supreme Court,” Fox legal analyst Jonathan Turley writes, urging the justices to take up her case “to protect freedom of the press.”
In a new essay for The Hill, Turley highlights the fact that Herridge filed her petition for a writ of certiorari earlier this month. The former Fox and CBS correspondent was subpoenaed to identify her sources for a 2017 report. She has refused to comply. SCOTUS previously declined her emergency request to pause daily fines for noncompliance; she’s now asking the court to hear her appeal.
“If the court again punts, then any aggrieved subject of a news story could effectively strip journalistic sources of confidentiality by alleging a Privacy Act violation,” Turley argues…
CNN’s Marshall Cohen is out with a new look at the role that “clippers” are playing on the political scene. These posters obsessively monitor campaign rallies, debates and events and sometimes post hundreds of clips per day. Cohen spoke with Aaron Rupar about how he balances accuracy with a desire to make a living by going viral again and again. Here’s his video dispatch…
Attacks on journalists in the occupied West Bank are being fueled by a “culture of impunity,” the Committee to Protect Journalists warned after Washington Post photographer Heidi Levine was hospitalized following an attack by Israeli settlers last week.
In a letter to Israel’s ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter, CPJ chief Jodie Ginsberg described the attack as “part of a disturbing pattern of violence and harassment by Israeli armed forces and settlers targeting journalists.”
“The perpetrators of these attacks have little reason to fear consequences, given the lack of accountability that follows,” she wrote, demanding that Israel “swiftly, thoroughly, and impartially investigate all attacks against journalists” and hold perpetrators “fully accountable under criminal law.”
Netflix shares are down more than 7% in premarket trading after last night’s Q3 earnings report card.
“The streaming giant reported revenue of $12.9 billion, up 12% from the same period a year earlier. That is the company’s lowest quarterly revenue percentage growth in three years,” the WSJ’s Jessica Toonkel wrote.
Slowing revenue growth and stagnating viewership are leading to headlines like this one from Reuters: “Netflix co-CEO Sarandos says ‘we could do better’ after weak forecast.”
That Ted Sarandos quote — “I know that we could do better, and we want to build on that momentum” — came as he talked about his content leadership team shakeup.
He praised Bela Bajaria’s “incredible decade-long run” before pivoting to Peter Rice and the “outpouring of excitement about him coming to Netflix.”
Sarandos also told investors “our business and our business flywheel are working, there is no need for a fundamental shift in the strategy,” though he added, “We do need better execution in the U.S.”
The stock’s slide reflects skepticism. This morning, there’s a tough FT story by Anna Nicolaou and Eric Platt, who write that the Sarandos comments “clashed with the turmoil engulfing Netflix.” They quote a longtime Hollywood exec saying Sarandos “is never going to admit it’s his mistake, so others will take the fall.”
Liam Reilly writes: During the Axios Media Trends Live conference yesterday, Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democrat, said she thinks ABC will win its First Amendment lawsuit against the commission.
“I can tell you that I’m very glad Disney found its courage because I’ve said this time and time again: capitulation breeds capitulation, but courage inspires courage,” Gomez said.
>> Elsewhere at the conference, Versant chief executive Mark Lazarus said the company isn’t likely to pick up rival Skydance’s cable networks, telling Sara Fischer, “Buying more cable assets on a large scale would prolong our life but not necessarily make our life better because we still have the secular decline.”
In the Axios conference’s final session, Trump Media and Technology Group CEO Kevin McGurn told Fischer that Truth Social is actively looking for more creators, saying, “I want more content on the service. I want more creators on the service. I want more distribution, not just here in the U.S.” but around the world.
Of course he does. The platform is tiny. Traffic declined 30% over the last year, according to Similarweb data recently shared with The Independent’s Isabel Keane, who noted that the platform averaged a measly 260,000 daily users in September.
>> Asked about probes into the company’s service charging financial firms up to $100,000 per month for faster access to Trump’s posts, McGurn declined to comment.
“Joel Kaplan, Meta’s chief global affairs officer, will leave Meta next year after 15+ years as Mark Zuckerberg’s top Washington adviser,” Axios’ Mike Allen scooped yesterday. Among many other things, Kaplan was “a leading internal advocate for consistency on Zuckerberg’s free-expression principles, even when that was unpopular.”
While Kaplan is “not a household name,” Mike Isaac wrote on X that the move is “about as significant as could be in Meta politics land.”
It’s “not lost on me that a midterms wipeout is expected and Kaplan was the conservative whisperer at the top,” he added.
Indeed, though former Trump 1.0 admin official and current Meta president Dina Powell McCormick is taking on an expanded role after Kaplan’s departure.
>> Meta reports earnings after the bell today…
One month after Bob Chapek released his Disney version of events, Bob Iger has confirmed that he, too, has written it all down.
Penguin Random House announced it will release Iger’s next book, “One Last Time: Managing Crisis and Building Resilience at Disney,” on March 2, 2027…
Larry Ellison went on a “multibillion-dollar borrowing spree” to help pay for his son David Ellison’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, the WSJ’s Margot Patrick reports in today’s paper, citing previously unreported California filings.
Instead of selling roughly $7.5 billion in Oracle stock, he kept his shares and borrowed more money, offering lenders stock in Oracle, Tesla, SpaceX and Paramount as collateral to help get the deal “over the finish line…”
>> Legendary Entertainment has revived its takeover bid for Lionsgate, Dawn Chmielewski and Thomas Buckley report. “Lionsgate shares climbed as much as 21%” after they broke the news. (Bloomberg)
>> “The Wall Street Journal has been planning a big push into streaming TV, and courted Feed Me’s Emily Sundberg for a show,” Lucia Moses and Nathan McAlone report. Sundberg is no longer in talks with the WSJ about it. (Business Insider)
>> “Slate, the digital news and culture magazine, has named editor-in-chief Hillary Frey as its new CEO, effective immediately.” (Axios)
>> The Paley Center for Media has added the aforementioned David Ellison and Dina Powell McCormick, as well as Roger Lynch and Chris Winfrey, to its board of trustees. (Variety)
>> TikTok employees “repeatedly raised concerns internally about the risks the short-form video app posed to children, including sexual exploitation and exposure to suicide content,” and previously unreported court records show that the employees were frustrated with how the company’s leadership responded to their concerns,” Katie McQue reports. (NPR)
>> Getty Images “is starting a prepackaged bankruptcy after securing a restructuring support agreement that will inject it with fresh money and take the photo archive and stock-image company private.” (Bloomberg)
>> Spotify has launched paid memberships, “a new way for podcasters to make money from their biggest fans beyond paywalled bonus episodes.” (TechCrunch)
>> “The Writers Guild of America East is attempting to make it harder for AI models to scan their members’ work.” (THR)
This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.