While a recent Pew Research poll shows just 22% of Americans trust the government in Washington to do what is right all or most of the time, George Barna of Arizona Christian University's Cultural Research Center says they are OK with local politicians.
"The closer the government is to the people, the more trust the people have in it," he explains. "Almost two-thirds of Americans say that they trust their local government and the leaders and officials that are part of that."
Only about half, however, say they trust their state government, and just a quarter trust the federal government.
Barna does not think it would take much for Trump's team to improve that trust because "it's so low right now, there's not too much lower than it can drop."
The media is a little different; Americans can just change the channel, and that is what they have been doing. For example, the primetime audience of MSNBC, which pushed the "cheap fake" narrative as the president's mental decline became more difficult to cover up, reportedly dipped 53% since the week before Trump's re-election. CNN likewise suffered a 47% drop.
The pollster predicts people will continue to move away from mainstream media and toward independent media like podcasts as "a completely new media environment" forms on Facebook, Instagram, and elsewhere.
Barna says reporters like Glenn Greenwald, John Solomon, Andy Ngo, and Catherine Herridge have struck out on their own and are doing a good job of reporting unbiased news, and people are starting to notice.
