Electorate’s Deep Cynicism is Greatest Cause for Optimism

After decades of America’s political, cultural, and media elites lying to the American electorate, the public has become deeply cynical and distrustful of institutional authority. But while this may initially seem like a depressing development, the fact that voters now understand they are being deceived has eroded the effectiveness of the lies propagated by those in power – perhaps marking the first step toward a restoration of constitutional government where the people are truly in charge.

There is no clearer illustration of the declining trust in American institutions than the complete collapse of faith in the legacy press. The percentage of Americans who say they have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the mass media according to Gallup has steadily declined from a high of 72 percent in 1976 to 34 percent in the most recent iteration of the poll last October.

But one development that does appear to be new is that Americans don’t just believe the news is untrustworthy or contains liberal or conservative bias – they believe media outlets are intentionally lying to them. According to a Gallup/Knight Foundation poll, just 25 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “national news outlets do not intend to mislead viewers.” 50 percent disagreed, saying they believe national news outlets do intend to mislead them.

Public trust in government is even lower. Just 20 percent of Americans say they trust the government all or most of the time. Among Democrats, that number is slightly higher at 29 percent, and it is much lower among Republicans, at just 9 percent.

On certain issues, many of which are of national importance, the public’s cynicism is even more pronounced.

One of the most obvious examples is Joe Biden’s cognitive decline. Despite an all-out effort by the White House and most of the mainstream media to portray the president as the epitome of good health, 63 percent of Americans don’t believe Biden is mentally or physically sharp enough to be president.

The public also hasn’t bought the White House’s defense of Hunter Biden or the media’s urgent attempts to convince people that the president’s son did nothing wrong. 61 percent of Americans don’t believe Democrats’ claims that there is “no evidence” Joe Biden was involved in Hunter’s influence peddling schemes. 77 percent of Americans say it’s “believable” that Hunter cheated on his taxes to hide his income (including 66 percent of Democrats) and 50 percent say Hunter is receiving favorable treatment because he is the president’s son.

Speaking of the president’s troubled son, 63 percent of Americans believe the infamous “laptop from hell” is important, with 44 percent saying it’s “very important,” despite rampant collusion by the media, Big Tech, and the Deep State to suppress and censor the story in 2020.

While the media and Democrat establishment’s efforts to cover for Joe and Hunter have caused the public to become more untrusting of the president, the crusade to paint former President Donald Trump as a criminal and enemy of the people seems to be having the exact opposite effect. It is truly remarkable that Trump can face four indictments, including 31 charges under the Espionage Act, and his poll numbers for both the GOP primary race and in a potential 2024 rematch with Biden only go up.

Most Americans also don’t buy the narrative that Trump somehow orchestrated the January 6 Capitol riot as a plot to overthrow the government. To the contrary, 61 percent of likely voters surveyed by Rasmussen believe undercover government agents intentionally provoked the riot – a direct rebuke of the Democrat-run January 6 committee’s assertions.

Even on ostensibly non-political issues, Americans are increasingly distrustful of the authorities.

For instance, a significant plurality of Americans (45 percent) believe that infamous child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was murdered, as opposed to only 16 percent who believe he died by suicide in his prison cell, as the official narrative states. The ongoing refusal of authorities to publish Epstein’s full client list has added more fuel to skeptics’ theories.

63 percent of Americans believe the government is withholding information on UFOs and potential contact with extraterrestrial life, compared to just 17 percent who don’t think that’s the case.

No one really believed the Biden administration, either, when they claimed the United States had nothing to do with the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline between Russia and Germany last year. A bombshell Substack report from Pulitzer-Prize winning journalism Seymour Hersh appeared to confirm those suspicions.

No one believed the media earlier this year when they claimed that a Hispanic man who committed a mass shooting at a Texas mall was a “white supremacist.”

No one believed the stated reason for withholding the manifesto of a transgender individual who tragically killed six people, including three children, inside a Nashville school in March. Though the police claimed “pending litigation” prevented them from disclosing the documents, skeptics pointed out that any time a supposedly right-wing mass shooter leaves a manifesto, it is plastered all over cable news networks within hours.

Heading into an election year, a public that simply doesn’t trust anything the media or their elected leaders say could have a profound and unpredictable effect on the shape of the race and its ultimate outcome. All of the theories that political analysts use to predict how elections will unfold are based on how news stories impact votes. But what happens when voters don’t trust the news?

For Trump, who has long made the political establishment and mainstream media two of his top targets, this could be an underappreciated advantage. Trump has been saying our elites have been lying to us for years, and now, it seems, more and more people are starting to see it too.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneHarris513.