Trump vs. Media: Mainstream News Outlets More Trusted Than POTUS, Poll Finds

President Donald Trump hasn’t exactly been winning popularity pageants lately. After Republican leaders failed last Friday to pass a health care bill that would overhaul the Affordable Care Act, Trump’s approval ratings have ranged from 46 percent to 36 percent.

For his part, Trump has blamed the bad polling and unsavory opinions of his job performance on the media. In fact, he’s made no attempt to hide his disdain for news outlets.

But in the battle between who’s more trustworthy — the media or Trump — the president seemed to be losing, according to a poll from Monmouth University released Wednesday.

Read: Does Fake News Help Trump? This Writer Plans To Stop The White House By Publishing Lies

When asked whether they trusted ABC News or Trump more, 53 percent of respondents said they trusted ABC News more, whereas 28 percent said they trusted Trump more. When it came to MSNBC, 47 percent said put more trust in MSNBC, while 33 percent said the opposite. And finally, 37 percent of respondents said they trusted Fox News more than Trump, while 17 percent said they’d believe Trump over Fox News.

Read: How Popular Is Trump? Republican Support Drops After Health Care Bill Collapses

But it’s not all good news for the media. About 36 percent of Americans believed that TV news and newspapers reported “fake news” occasionally, while 27 percent believed news outlets did this regularly. Nearly 40 percent believed that news outlets reported false information on purpose, to push an agenda, while 17 percent believed it was accidently, for reasons such as poor fact checking.

The poll also found:

• 81 percent of Americans thought Trump’s relationship with the press was worse than past presidents, whereas only 4 percent believed it was better.
• 58 percent of respondents believed Trump’s relationship with the media had a negative effect on the President’s image, whereas 7 percent said it helped his image; 32 percent believed it didn’t have an effect either way.
• Similarly, 51 percent believed that the current president/press relationship hurt the news media’s image; 6 percent said it helped; 39 percent believed it had no effect.

The poll was conducted over the phone from March 2 to 5, with a national random sample of 801 adults. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.