Trump: "Any negative polls are fake news"

[Aegon]

Uh yeah, sort of. Gaslighting is a term in the poli sci community to describe the way populist leaders try to totally discredit the media so that the people get their information directly from the leader.

What is he supposed to do - tell everyone that the media that hates him is justified in hating him lol? The media seeks to discredit him and so he will seek to discredit them. Makes sense to me. I mean he could just go full dictator and ban all media that isn't government

He tries to discredit government media (NPR, PBS) as well, since government-funded media in the U.S. is significantly different than government-funded media in other countries. The government does not have nearly as much control over it as some countries do. And, uh, reporting that people disapprove of him is not fake news. Reporting the protests against him and his actions is not fake news. Reporting poll data from independent polling companies is not fake news. He calls whatever makes him look bad fake news. Surely you see that?

I mean, Kellyanne Conway is out there talking about "alternative facts," and says that if the media keeps reporting negatively on Trump then the administration will have to "rethink their relationship", Press Secretary Sean Spicer is constantly lying to the media's faces despite being called out in every press briefing (I watch almost every press briefing and it's amazing how he will literally just lie to a reporter and dismiss whatever facts they bring to him.) And Trump says anything CNN or the New York Times ever utters is fake news; meanwhile Brietbart gets front seats at media events. He obviously does not care about the quality of the news. He cares about who makes him look good. The fact that legitimate news organizations are getting punished for reporting the ABSURD shit that Trump is doing is ridiculous.