Are Americans growing weary of the Trump-Russia story?

By Kent R. Kroeger (March 23, 2018)

{Send comments to: kkroeger@nuqum.com}

The signs are starting to appear…

The American people may be growing weary of the Trump-Russia story.

The first sign is what scares media executives the most…TV ratings. It’s the canary-in-the-mine indicator.

MSNBC’s three leading prime time news programs experienced ratings declines between January and February this year. Rachel Maddow lost 159,000 adult viewers, Lawrence O’Donnell dropped 248,000, and Chris Hayes shed 87,000. At the same time, Fox News saw complementary increases across its prime time lineup.

Its just one month and MSNBC’s weekday evening schedule still garners more viewers than a year ago. But trends start somewhere.

The second sign of Russia-fatigue is the recent sustained increase in Donald Trump’s job approval ratings. As of March 23rd, the RealClearPolitics.com average was at 41.6 percent.

He’s not exactly popular. In fact, he remains historically unpopular for this stage in a presidency. Yet, for Trump, 41.6 percent looks good. He is well off his all-time lows in mid-December 2017, when he had 37 percent approval, and if the trend were to continue through October, the GOP would have a decent chance of keeping control of the U.S. House.

Trump is too unpredictable to justify any prediction that bold. But it is also true he is in the midst of his presidency’s most sustained increase in job approval. Hardly evidence that the American public is losing faith in his presidency over the Trump-Russia probe.

And the third sign of Russia-fatigue should scare establishment Democrats the most. Progressive Democrats are openly starting to wonder if the Democrats’ obsession with Russia isn’t designed to distract Americans from the real issues that affect their lives: Jobs, health care, college costs, income inequality, etc.

During a March 19th live-streamed discussion of income inequality, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and…