TRUMP HAS ‘MY KEVIN’ TRAPPED
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is under intense pressure from the right to do all he can to protect Donald Trump from justice and accountability. The former president’s backers want McCarthy to direct the House to defund Justice Department prosecutions of Trump and to impeach President Biden, apparently to muddy the waters around Trump’s culpability.
A new poll from the New York Times and Siena College helps explain why McCarthy might struggle to resist this pressure. Large percentages of likely GOP primary voters appear convinced of Trump’s innocence — and a big reason for this appears to be Fox News and right-wing media.
The poll’s top-line finding is that Trump leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by overwhelming margins among these voters, which include registered Republicans and GOPleaning independents. But it also finds:
› 71% of these voters don’t think Trump committed serious federal crimes.
› 75% say that in trying to overturn the 2020 election, he was merely exercising his right to contest the outcome.
› 71% say Republicans must stand by Trump.
On all these questions, there’s a notable split based on these voters’ media consumption. Huge majorities of those who turn to Fox News as their main source believe all those things, while sizable percentages of those who rely on mainstream news sources do not:
› 91% of those who rely on Fox do not think Trump committed serious crimes. Only 5% think he did. Among those who rely on mainstream sources, those numbers are 52% and 38%.
› 83% of those who rely on Fox think Trump merely exercised his right to contest his 2020 loss, vs. only 12% who say he threatened American democracy. Among voters who rely on mainstream news, those numbers are 58% and 37%.
› 85% of those who rely on Fox say Republicans must stand by Trump, vs. only 9% who disagree. Among those who rely on mainstream sources, those numbers are 49% and 46%.
A large percentage of these GOP primary voters — over 40%, according to Siena’s polling director — rely on Fox and/or other right-wing media sources for their news. And voters who rely on other right-wing sources give answers similar to those of Fox viewers.
Through Trump’s two impeachments, through our reckoning over the Jan. 6 insurrection, through the investigation and indictment of him over national security secrets, Fox News figures have relentlessly insisted that the real criminals are those who would hold Trump accountable, not Trump himself.
McCarthy — or “my Kevin,” as Trump aptly christened him — and other GOP leaders and elected Republicans followed the same tack, adopting the position that all law enforcement or congressional investigative activity involving Trump is inherently illegitimate. So where has that left all of them?
Well, as Punchbowl News reports, the intensifying charges against Trump have led him and his supporters to demand more from the House GOP: They want Biden impeached, more probes of the Biden family’s supposed crimes, Attorney General Merrick Garland held in contempt of Congress and more.
But those things could lead to tough votes for vulnerable members. So McCarthy and GOP leaders are fending off this pressure by tentatively supporting a mere precursor inquiry to the impeachment of Biden and letting House GOP committees run wild with lurid tales of Trumpian persecution. As Punchbowl notes, this effort to “walk a very narrow line” will get harder as the indictments mount.
We will never know whether the GOP primary electorate would have been this in thrall to the doctrine of Trump’s absolute innocence if Republican leaders had condemned his conduct at earlier points. But the role of Fox News and right-wing media in this disaster for democracy seems painfully clear.