Reality Check: New Polling Data Exposes Anti-DOGE Gaslighting Campaign
The protests are Astroturf: “In one case, a former Dem county board candidate and self-described ‘political activist’ helped organize a viral demonstration in Georgia.”
Democrats are making much of the numerous angry constituents who are showing up at House Republicans’ town halls and district offices to protest the Department of Government Efficiency’s aggressive push to expose and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse inside of federal agencies.
On the Friday evening edition of Fox News’ The Five, the show’s lone Democrat Jessica Tarlov, told colleagues that many Americans, even those who voted for President Donald Trump, were experiencing buyer’s remorse. Referring to the protests that disrupted Republican town halls the previous night, she said:
So [Republicans] Rich McCormick in Georgia – safe seat – people booing him, catcalling, they’re concerned with everything from spending cuts to what’s going on with DOGE to that Donald Trump is becoming a tyrant. Cliff Bentz in Oregon – similar reaction. This guy Tony Balderson – he’s in a Trump +18 district in Ohio – [constituents] saying Trump’s executive orders are getting out of control. They are hearing from the American public that what is going on, from the Oval Office to CPAC … is not what the American public wanted.
Tarlov, well known for dutifully memorizing, reciting, and at times, even reading the Democratic talking points, forgot to tell viewers that these protests were planned and organized by the Left.
Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s approval ratings are falling right now. Americans are having buyer's remorse.
And you know who is feeling it the most? Republicans facing their constituents at town halls. pic.twitter.com/XjeTX2KGlt
— Jessica Tarlov (@JessicaTarlov) February 22, 2025
Democrats are trying hard to create the narrative that even Republicans are pushing back on DOGE. The Washington Free Beacon’s Colin Anderson details their efforts in a Tuesday article titled, Red-District DOGE Protests, Cited As Proof of Broad Musk ‘Backlash,’ Were Organized By Left-Wing Groups. He reported, “In one case, a former Dem county board candidate and self-described ‘political activist’ helped organize a viral demonstration in Georgia.”
Red-District DOGE Protests, Cited As Proof of Broad Musk 'Backlash,' Were Organized By Left-Wing Groups @CAndersonMO @FreeBeacon https://t.co/PbXUYAr6gt
— Matthew Continetti (@continetti) February 25, 2025
Planned to appear as organic, grassroots protests, these organized events, intended to influence public opinion, are known as “astroturfing.” And they are not a new phenomenon.
Professor William Jacobson, a Cornell law professor, identified a series of astroturfed protests in February 2017 against Republican Rep. Tom Reed in New York State and detailed the story here. He wrote: [Emphasis added.]
You probably have seen viral videos of the disruption of town halls held by Congressman Tom Reed.
The media narrative is that there was an organic, grassroots uprising by concerned citizens.
Don’t believe it. As detailed below, there was a well-organized national and local campaign to get activists to Reed’s town halls for the specific purpose of creating a protest environment. Instructions how to protest and what questions to ask were circulated.
Professor Jacobson noted he’d spotted his first clue in an article “in The Cornell Sun student newspaper about Cornell students traveling to Reed’s town halls, even though the town halls were hours away (it’s a geographically huge district).”
No one should be surprised that Democrats have resorted to the use of astroturfing to sway public opinion. It’s one of several highly effective weapons they can use to convince voters that Trump’s efforts to cut waste, fraud, and abuse from the federal budget are somehow harmful to the country. Although cutting fat out of the government should be a bipartisan goal rather than a controversial issue, the Democrats had to find a way to make it appear unpalatable to as many Americans as possible.
But astroturfing is just one of the Left’s tools. As always, the legacy media works in tandem with party members to support and promote their narratives and gaslight the public. And this time is no different.
The gaslighting from the media is coming hard and fast. In a widely read article titled The Coup Has Failed, The American Prospect’s David Dayen breathlessly told readers that one month in, “Trump’s cooked. His failure has followed the usual direction of political overreach.”
Over the weekend, James Carville made the absurd prediction that Trump’s administration will experience a “massive collapse” within the next 30 days.
James Carville issues wild prediction that the Trump admin will experience a “massive collapse” in the next 30 days:
“This whole thing is collapsing….the analogy I use is Pickett is 500 yards from the stone wall. Hold your fire. It's going to be easy pickings here in six… pic.twitter.com/1Rx7trZ07P
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) February 24, 2025
And funnily, Carville cited a recent Harvard-Harris poll as proof. Unfortunately for Carville, a new iteration of the poll released on Monday was actually very positive for Trump as well as for DOGE. It showed Trump’s job approval at 52%, nine points above his disapproval of 43%.
President Trump Job Approval
Approve: 52% (+9)
Disapprove: 43%
Harvard/Harris | 2/19-20 | 2,443 RV | ±2% pic.twitter.com/OXiUg5IheB
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) February 24, 2025
The poll also found that 76% of respondents support “undertaking a full-scale effort to find and eliminate fraud and waste in government expenditures.” In other words, they like what DOGE is doing. In fact, with the exception of renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America (which only 39% supported) the majority of individuals polled supported Trump’s entire agenda by majorities that ranged from 57% (for ending bans on offshore drilling in Alaska and elsewhere) to 81% (for deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes).
Harvard/Harris poll showing interesting results with widespread support for the new administration's policies even from democrats. Overwhelming support for cutting spending and fiscal rectitude. Full results in linkhttps://t.co/Tfe7e8uFgM pic.twitter.com/JyJaTRxfrB
— zeibars (@zeibars) February 24, 2025
From the latest Harvard Caps / Harris poll:
pic.twitter.com/xJ0QXk2KX2
— Lowkey Rey 2.0 (@AtlRey) February 24, 2025
The naysayers may want to have a look at this poll before declaring Trump “cooked” or making uninformed predictions about the imminent collapse of his administration.
Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
They like hanging posters in LA, too, all bought and paid for. A far cry from Sabo.
Bought and paid for by……ISAId
This all takes me back to the days of Shrillary’s campaign and all the plants they had. Some of the first viral memes were about the Shrillary plants – except in those cases I think they were plants in Shrillary’s town halls to make pretend people liked her and were interested in her babbling.
Of course, the left has almost always been nothing but astroturf. All the left can do is propaganda. If you catch them at the right time they are even proud of it. Everything on the left is bought and paid for and the fact that the right can only get people to show up when they really want to drives the left even madder than they normally are.
Smart people would have learned from the J6 Unselect Committee. Only their followers are fooled by the hoaxes, and they are every time!
LOL. Carville is a retard. I don’t know how that moron ever got a reputation of being good at politics. He sucked. The only reason Clinton won in ’92 was because of Ross Perot. And Perot still had a large effect in 1996, too, even though Clinton was running on Newt’s accomplishments in Congress.
Carville is entertaining (and he got a great portrayal by Billy Bob Thorton in Primary Colors) but he really isn’t very good at politics.
Perot was a bit of a factor but don’t kid yourself.
Clinton was at 49% even WITH Perot. Without Perot he still would have crushed Dole because Bob Dole was one of the worst candidates EVER.
He was old (yes I know Trump is older but Dole ACTED old), stupid, out of touch, and kept whining about the ‘spoiled’ boomers and talking about WW2 and the Great Depression.
This campaign is much like when tehy were crying poor Thugvon, and a bunch of others smear cases, with ghetto lottery.
Jessica Tarlov is a fool masquerading as an idiot.
and here I thought she was an idiot masquerading as a fool.
So long as she is recognized for the useful idiot she is, all is good. She is on The Five as comic relief.
Harold Ford is a good Democrat that doesn’t seem to swallow the Kool Aid.
I can barely stand it when she opens her mouth.
Quelle surprise…
The communists are operating as if they and their minions in the MSM still control the flow of information. DOGE is publishing their findings for all to see.
The MSM torched their credibility so bad over the last 8 years that the normals began to notice. I think Brandon’s debate performance opened the floodgates in that regard.
Not just the flow of information but the content. The old school attempt here at gas lighting and emotional blackmail ‘oh, Federal Workers may get fired, how will their children get food’ won’t have the intended effect.
The average person has witnessed countless iterations of ‘learn to code/go build solar panels’. Saw it with the offshore of US manufacturing, saw it with coal mining, saw it with oil/gas. Saw this same attitude from the credentialed class ramped up to eleventy for small businesses during Covid Mania.
Average people know they don’t GAF, know they are carrying water for big govt grifters who paid the MSM huge subsidies via bogus, overpriced subscriptions. Folks understand b/c they can’t maintain their gatekeeper status and see the examples of their suspicions about big gov’t being confirmed.
2 points:
1 – Every R in every townhall, interview – live or video or audio needs to say something along the following: The DOGE program was designed by Obama people to collect all the information the could about all of us.
– Trump and Elon simply renamed it
– Elon and company are going after people who broke the law which means almost everyone who crossed the border, particularly the last 4 years
2 – This article ( https://www.dailywire.com/news/a-doge-origin-story-how-barack-obama-laid-the-groundwork-for-elon-musk) shows the penetration of the hard leftists to destroy Trump. The leftists are crazy – IF they win, they will become target of groups that hate their behavior – and it won’t be Christian conservatives.
“This guy Tony Balderson – he’s in a Trump +18 district in Ohio – [constituents] saying Trump’s executive orders are getting out of control.”
While Biden’s shit-ton of EOs were just peachy-dory.
Dear Elon,
I feel the need for speed. More! More! More!
It’s like everything else those left-wing Communists do, freaking fake
Everything that the vile, subversive and evil Dhimmi-crat totalitarians and fifth columnists do is transparently contrived and ginned-up agitprop theater and theatrics. Nothing, including these “protests” against DOGE’s audits and cost-cutting, is organic and authentic. The Dhimmi-crats know that stirring the pot of domestic strife and getting their agitators to show up and disrupt town hall meetings at a loud volume allows them to peddle a fallacious narrative (aided by a compliant and water-carrying Dhimmi-crat media) alleging, absurdly, that #47’s reforms aren’t widely popular with the electorate.
The democrats and like seagulls at the beach when it comes to DOGE. They think they can eat it if they squawk and scream and swoop and poop enough. Turns out its just a fiip flop gulls, go eat sand.
Elizabeth :
A suggestion.
Check out the National Review, Reason.com, and FEE.org deal with Trump. As principled ,conservatives/libertaruans, they call him out when he does stupid things.
You have devolved into fangirling Musk and Trump. As Charles Cooke said. You can’t criticize Joy Reid for being a propagandist if you are doing the same .
This article is fine for the the most part,but it’s dog bites man. Astroturfing has long been a left wing staple.
But here’s what i have an issue
“The poll also found that 76% of respondents support “undertaking a full-scale effort to find and eliminate fraud and waste in government expenditures.” In other words, they like what DOGE is doing. ”
Of course everybody supports rooting out fraud and waste. I used to work for the Inspector general for the USDA ( food stamps) and that was the mission for the IG. As it was for all the 17 Ig’s Trump fired. Maybe you should do an article on THAT. Did Trump d
o a detailed analysis of those 17 IG’s? ( rhetorical-of course he didn’t) . Why didn’t he fire any IG’s his first term? Were they doing a good job then? So are the replacements going to have the MAGA loyalty test ? So far all his appointments have. Does that not concern you? one party rule typical of all dictators? I can tell you it concerns NR and Reason. Because they care about principles. Take heed
You are tying yourself in knots.
Right leaning swamp creatures don’t get criticize Trump for jack squat in this term. They are part of the problem. They are the ones saying “use a scalpel”
A scalpel would never have cut USAID. A scalpel will never cut off the money spigot for all the left wing grifters. These astro turfers are doing astroturf work using MY MONEY.
I’ve got a stack of tax info sitting right beside my keyboard and I’m anticipating an effective tax rate >20% this year.
FIRE THEM ALL!!!!!!!!
‘Fire them all”
Congrats- you just earned a red hat!!
LOL
Where is your dunce cap, fool? I admonish you to never leave home, without it, so as to apprise the public of your status as a witless worm.
The Democrats most certainly DO NOT want to root out fraud and waste because, in one way or another, many of them benefit from it.
In Trump’s first term, he was blind to the tremendous amount of power held by the administrative state – which I call the deep state. He had no idea of its capacity to destroy him. But he learned fast. Unwilling to let them get in his way the second time around, he’s getting rid of them and replacing them with less partisan officials. And thank God.
If ‘everyone’ supported rooting out fraud, waste, abuse then there wouldn’t be any in the first place. If we limit that to ‘everyone in DC in a position to do something’ aka the establishment ….they have had decades to do it.
IOW the credentialed class of big gov’t grifters doing the whining should have used the ‘scalpel’ when they had the power to do so. They refused. Gov’t morphed into a leviathan with $36+ Trillion debt.
So due to their refusal, they get the trimming done by others who are more than willing to forego anesthesia and use a hammer and chisel or a chainsaw to get it done. Gonna be way more painful than it would if the folks whining about the need for precision had made the cuts themselves. Tough cookies.
IOW the credentialed class of big gov’t grifters doing the whining should have used the ‘scalpel’ when they had the power to do so. They refused. Gov’t morphed into a leviathan with $36+ Trillion debt.
It was laughable when Chuck Schumer got in front of the camera to complain about DOGE using a hamfisted meat axe to cut the waste instead of a scalpel.
My thought was this (and all of this info is easily verifiable):
– Ol’ Chucky was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1998 and sworn in in 1999. The national debt in 1998 was ~$5.5 trillion. He could have pressed to cut the waste then, but didn’t.
– He was re-elected in 2004, when the debt was ~$7.4 trillion, and could have pressed to cut waste, but didn’t.
– He was re-elected again in 2010, the debt was ~$13.6 trillion, and could have pressed to cut waste, but didn’t.
– Again in 2016, when the debt was ~$19.6 trillion, and this time he also became Chair of the Democrat Caucus in the Senate and had the power to require cutting waste before approving any budgetary bills, but again, didn’t.
– Finally in 2022, when the debt was ~$30.9 trillion, has since grown to over $36 trillion, and has caused the U.S. international credit rating to be downgraded.
The man has been in the U.S. Senate for a quarter-century and has chaired his caucus for close to a decade, and could have pushed to cut waste at any point back when it was possible to use a scalpel. But he didn’t. And now, because of politicians like him (and arguably because of him, personally, since 2017 — when the debt was just over half what it is now), a cleaver, chainsaw, or machete (pick your metaphor) is required to make any significant headway.
He has no room to complain, especially for the last half that accrued under his leadership. He and people like him are the problem — of course they’re complaining about the solution!
Elizabeth – That’s a BS answer. “Deep state” ? Really Elizabeth? Can you sound any more cultish?
So did Obama and Biden fire all the GOP deep stater s and replace them with Dem deep administrative staters.?I’m not talking high level positions .Those are always partisan. Always. When you us the term ‘Deep state” you are clearly talking about lower level admin positions.Since 1980 we have had Regan, Bush, Clinton, Bush , Obama. Trump , Biden. 32 years – of which 16 were Republicans.
So did Obama and Biden fire all the GOP deep stater s and replace them with Dem deep administrative staters?
As for the high level positions- Trump has CLEARLY applied the MAGA test-with maybe the exception of labor, (we”ll see about that one) and not the competency test . That’s the way it works- he has that pregrottive. But PLEASE don’t try spin the nomination of Hegseth, Patel, Bondi, Noem , Duffy et al of being ‘less partisan’ .
The ‘deep state’ aka big Gov’t DC establishment is NOT limited to d/prog. Both Bush 41 and Bush 43were all about more federal power and increased size, scope of federal gov’t. Reagan, who let’s not forget was a former d/prog labor leader and very much governed CA as big gov’t Governor, also signed onto the disastrous ’86 immigration reform bill.
IOW what we now have in Trump is a political figure surrounding himself with appointees far more in tune with the center/right populist mood of the electorate. A mood rejecting the bipartisan grifting status quo that the.DC establishment, federal bureaucracy, big business, big labor and ‘permanent Washington’ adores.
oh please. The ‘greatest President ever’ was President 4 years ago. What happened? Was the Federal bureaucracy torn down. Was Spending slashed?
If you can’t see what a con man ‘ the greatest President ever ‘ is, then you probably believe he never knew Jean Carrol, he never effed Stormy Daniels, the election in 2020 was rigged, he declassified all the documents at MAR-A LAgo ,and that ‘the greatest President ever’ asked Pelosi for NG troops on 1/6. But -wild guess- you believe all things. amirite?
Instead of arguing the points I made you have conceded and chosen to move on to a typical form of leftist passive aggressive ad hominem attack.
Gotta ID the waste, fraud and abuse first before it can be cut. DOGE is an 18 month project to do just that. Gonna take action not lip service from Congress to make the needed cuts. Many fat DC piggies are squealing so they seem to be finding the not so hidden corners where they suck on the teat of big gov’t funding.
If DJT and the current Congress can’t get it done or refuse b/c too many vested interests with their snouts in the trough cry too hard and bribe too much… well this is the merely the polite phase. What comes after should being polite fail will be very impolite and most uncivil.
ok fair enough. Yes – both Reagan and Bush were big spenders as was Trump. (In fact the only time spending was reigned in in the last 50 years was under Clinton and for that we have Newt to thank) /You left him out for some reason. Why? And why aren’t you addressing the 100000000000 EO’s signed by Trump . Is that not expanding federal power.? Do you think the federal govt should be involved in who gets to play a sport? How NYC charges congestion pricing? How colleges and universities decide how to hire people?
For sure Clinton and a GoP House did get a technical balance in the budget, some accounting gimmicks were used, but give the Devil his due, they actually made a serious effort to get there not just wish casting.
Some of that success was on heels and in part a result of the Perot populism from both ’92 and ’96 pointing out the Cray Cray gov’t deficit spending. Sadly the establishment of both major parties is addicted to big spending. One party prefers guns and the other butter but both gonna have to be cut.
As for Federal involvement in Education and surface transportation. unfortunately the Federal Govt is heavily involved is providing funding so the recipients can either choose to forego the funding and the strings that come with it or knuckle under.
Personally I would eliminate the Dept ED and all its funding to States for K-12 /University direct and indirect of all kinds including research grants and student loans/Pell.grant. If students want federal $ they can join the Army and earn VA Benefits.
Same for surface transportation. The Feds should end the Federal tax on fuels and ALL federal surface transportation funding. The States can then choose the way they want to raise revenue to pay for roads, bridges, subways, busses, big ass tunnels, trains and yes Amtrak. For that matter gut the TSA, give the Airport Authorities the equipment and let they choose how much to replace TSA with in their location and let them add ticket fees to get the $ required to pay for it out of user fees at the airport.
Hiring is different, see Civil Rights Act. So long as they aren’t engaging in discrimination then they can hire who they want…though any non US Citizens gotta have permission Visa….and of course we should add viewpoint as a category of nondiscrimination for employment and then everyone can decide if we want to keep ‘disparate impact’ as proof of discrimination or not. I suspect many institutions/entities and individuals who welcome it now will choose ‘not’ when they get hammered on it when political affiliation as a proxy for viewpoint becomes the norm.
oh and what about this Elizabeth?
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/goodgovernment/actions/campaign-cut-waste
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/15/we-can-t-wait-agencies-cut-nearly-18-billion-improper-payments-announce-