President Reagan's Radio Address to the Nation on Tarrifs, 1987

For the record, here are my biases. I hate Trump. I think that he's a threat to democracy, and I wish that red America would wake up and reject him. But I'm painfully aware that the world doesn't work like I would wish. And so I'll look for what I judge to be most accurate. And not for what I want.

You claim that the actual number of rural counties carried by Trump is much lower than the 93% that I said. But my 93% comes from your article. Do you have a reference that disagrees with your own article? If not, then you are insisting on facts that are not in evidence.

You also reject my bringing up that figure as being stuck in the past. But I didn't just stick in the past. I brought in current polls. Polls of his base, which truly do dominate rural counties, show that his support is holding strong. Certainly his support is holding strong among the rural people that I know through my family.

But let's be more specific. According to https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-approval-rating-rural-... last month, Trump's rating has slumped in rural counties from an overall approval of +22% down to +14%. Which means that some minds changed, but a random person from a rural county has probably not turned on Trump. Which is the opposite of your original claim.

Next up, the article brings up various groups that dislike this decision or that which Trump has made. But it is extremely common for us to dislike some decision that a political leader makes while continuing to support them overall. Registering specific unhappiness does *NOT* mean a change in popular support. It just means that there is specific unhappiness.

In fact the single decision that Trump made which caused the most specific unhappiness in his base is the choice to not release the Jeffry Epstein files. From https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/most-americans-want-th..., about 2/3 of Republicans want them released. But despite most of Trump's base disliking that decision, polling says that they are part of his base.

And no, I'm not looking for selective validation. I'm simply reading the news in a critical fashion. Per https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left/cnn-bias/, CNN has a left-wing bias, and is only "mostly factual". What that means in practice is that they put a spin on stories that will appeal to left-wing audiences. Left-wing audiences want to believe that Trump's base is turning against him. That's the spin in the article.

But the article offered no fact which would lead me to believe that. And if you want to find out whether people have turned against Trump, the most reliable way to do so is to ask them. "Did you vote for Trump? Would you support Trump now?" Which is *EXACTLY* what a poll does.

My preference for polls is not a preference for the version I want to hear. It is a preference for the best kind of data asking the question that I want answered.