GOP lawmakers jolted by 'divide' between public opinion and right-wing media’s 'disinformation bubble'

During President Donald Trump's first month back in the White House, many right-wing media outlets — from Fox News and its sister channel Fox Business to Newsmax TV — aggressively championed his policies, including mass layoffs at a wide range of federal government agencies.

Trump's alliance with SpaceX/Tesla/X.com CEO Elon Musk, who heads the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), receives plenty of favorable coverage at Fox News. And the most controversial members of Trump's administration are being championed in right-wing media.

But the Washington Post's Philip Bump, in his February 24 column, stresses that Republican politicians are running into a disconnect between right-wing media coverage and public responses to Trump's policies.

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For example, Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisconsin) — who won reelection by 22 percent in his district — was "booed upon his arrival at a town hall event near Oshkosh" on Friday, February 21. Many attendees were angry over the Trump Administration/DOGE layoffs.

"Why the divide? Unquestionably in part because Trump supporters exist in a disinformation bubble, to paraphrase a prominent foreign leader," Bump explains. "They don't see it that way, of course; in their view, their news diet represents an escape from falsehoods propagated by left-leaning elites. But the falsity of that framing is easily demonstrated."

Grothman and other GOP lawmakers who are being booed at town hall events, according to Bump, "often spend most of their lives within the right-wing media universe, where Trump and Musk are treated with fervently policed admiration."

"That Republican legislators are now facing complaints from constituents is a reminder of the limits of the extent of the right's propaganda machine," Bump argues. "The mechanism Watters celebrates may reaches millions of people, but tens of millions of people voted against Trump in November despite that. Most Americans reject the idea that firing hundreds of thousands of government employees is necessary to fight waste and fraud."

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Philip Bump's full Washington Post column is available at this link (subscription required).