Where Trump Supporters Get Their News
Plus: A Pro-Trump Christian TV Show
A majority of those who don't follow political news at all, and few newspaper readers, support former President Donald Trump.
Fifty-three percent of those who don't follow political news support Trump, compared to 27 percent for President Joe Biden, according to a new NBC News poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted last month. Newspaper readers, however, support Biden over Trump, 70% to 21%.
Trump is also preferred among those who get their news from cable news and YouTube/Google, and Biden is preferred among those who get their news from national network news.
I'm often asked why the presidential race is so close, given all of Trump's criminal indictments and trials, and the fact that he was found guilty of sexual assault. News source, or the lack of any news source, is a big part of the answer. Often, these voters are completely unaware of the details of Trump's trials, or their news sources are telling them the indictments are a politically motivated attack with no evidence.
“It’s almost comic. If you’re one of the remaining Americans who say you read a newspaper to get news, you are voting for Biden by 49 points,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the poll alongside Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt.
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“These are voters who have tuned out information, by and large, and they know who they are supporting, and they aren’t moving,” Horwitt said.
“That’s why it’s hard to move this race based on actual news. They aren’t seeing it, and they don’t care,” he continued.
NBC News also published a profile of a TV show for Christians where some Trump supporters get their information.
Over the next three hours, the audience heard the same overarching message that “FlashPoint” broadcasts three times a week on the Victory Channel television network and various streaming platforms: The world has entered its final years. Jesus will soon return. But Christians are not meant to wait idly while evil runs rampant; they are called to occupy positions of power and influence in society. And in the short term, that means putting Donald Trump back in the White House.
“I watch to get the truth,” said one “FlashPoint” attendee, who described a “supernatural” rush of clarity the first time she found the show while flipping channels two years ago.
“This is the only news show where you hear what Jesus thinks,” said another attendee, a mother of three school-aged children who’d driven four hours from central North Carolina for the taping.
Do you struggle with news source management in your own life, family, or church? Our small group courses, Mending Division Academy, has a course on journalism taught by Christianity Today editor Bonnie Kristian, "When Journalism Divides Us: Confronting Our Media Consumption Habits." For this month, you can get half-off with the code, "MAY50."
Check out this short clip of Kristian's course:
Disarming Leviathan
I was on Pastor Caleb Campbell’s Disarming Leviathan podcast recently. Watch below or look for it on your podcasting app. And make sure you’ve subscribed to the Disarming Leviathan substack newsletter. Campbell has also written a book with the same title, Disarming Leviathan: Loving Your Christian Nationalist Neighbor, which you can pre-order at the AVC bookshop here.
What Else We're Reading
Salon: “Who believes the most "taboo" conspiracy theories? It might not be who you think”
That wasn’t exactly scientific, but a new paper entitled “The Status Foundations of Conspiracy Beliefs” by Saverio Roscigno, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Irvine, is. Its most eye-catching finding is the discovery of “a cluster of graduate-degree-holding white men who display a penchant for conspiracy beliefs” that are “distinctively taboo.”
Specifically, Roscigno writes, “approximately a quarter of those who hold a graduate degree agree or strongly agree” that school shootings like those at Sandy Hook and Parkland “are false flag attacks perpetrated by the government,” which is “around twice the rate of those without graduate degrees.” Results are similar for the proposition that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust “has been exaggerated on purpose.”
Elizabeth Neumann interviewed by NPR: “Christian author, warning of domestic terrorism, speaks directly to her community”
NEUMANN: And quite frankly, the experience of the Muslim community after 9/11 is part of the conviction I had to write this book. We asked a lot of the Muslim community after 9/11. We said, please push back against this extremist interpretation of your faith, and many people did. If we asked that of the Muslim faith, shouldn't we be asking that of the Christian faith?
Listen to the whole thing:
Politico: “Threats, harassment of election workers have risen, poll shows”
More than a third of surveyed local election officials have experienced threats, harassment or abuse due to their jobs, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
The 38 percent of local election officials who reported mistreatment in the poll from the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law marks an 8 percentage point uptick from the survey’s 2023 edition. The most common manner of receiving these threats occurred in person or over the phone.
The Newshour: “These Republicans have united to defend the legitimacy of U.S. elections and election officials”
Sterling, the chief operating officer for the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office, is part of an effort begun after the last presidential election that seeks to bring together Republican officials who are willing to defend the country’s election systems and the people who run them. They want officials to reinforce the message that elections are secure and accurate, an approach they say is especially important as the country heads toward another divisive presidential contest.
The group has held meetings in several states, with more planned before the Nov. 5 election.
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