Trump's budget director admits only Fox viewers like GOP's widely despised tax bill

After answering softball questions on Fox News Thursday morning about the GOP’s tax scam bill (“Does this mean people get to spend more at Christmas?”), Donald Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, announced that the only reason so many voters don’t like the bill is because not enough voters watch Fox News.

Or something.

Essentially, Mulvaney argued to host Steve Doocy that American voters aren’t smart enough to understand how wonderful the GOP tax scam is, and they’re being duped by the news media:

DOOCY: People don’t like to pay taxes to you would think this would be a good story you. And yet Mick, the Quinnipiac poll came out and it shows that 57 percent of American don’t like it, as opposed to 26 percent who do. Can you explain to me why people don’t like the idea of a tax cut?

MULVANEY: Sure. Because if you turn to any channel besides this one, all you’re going to hear is bad news about this particular bill. I was walking into work this morning and listening to radio here in Washington, D.C. And it was one negative story after another about this tax bill. No one is focusing, as you folks do. On what’s good for people in this bill. So if you get your news here, you probably like it, because you focused on what’s good for you. But if no, you don’t.

The Quinnipiac poll referenced by Fox News found that 64 percent of American voters think the GOP plan benefits the wealthy the most.

In truth, a large portion of Republican voters don’t even like this monstrosity of a tax giveaway to the super rich, so it’s not clear how the White House would try to spin that fact. Supposedly, those are Republicans who don’t watch Fox News? Or those are Republicans who watch Fox News but don’t pay close enough attention? Only have it on in the background?

The whole idea — that an administration is trying to pass a transforming piece of tax legislation and the reason nobody likes it is because a couple cable news channels are being mean — is absurd.

The way you convince voters that legislation is good for them is you have an open, transparent process where the bill is debated over many, many months.

Instead, apparently afraid that contents of the tax giveaway bill would spark widespread protests, the GOP has essentially kept the bill hidden from public view, refusing to having meaningful hearings or allow experts to testify.

Meanwhile, tax bill polling numbers that are piling up are staggering and historic. That’s all the more amazing considering U.S. voters, of course, traditionally like the idea of getting a tax cut.

No major party in recent history has ever tried to pass a piece of legislation so universally despised as the GOP tax bill, let alone present the bill as the cornerstone to the party’s legislative agenda.

A recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll found that just 32 percent support the GOP tax plan. That’s actually on the high end of recent polling, yet that’s still the lowest level of public support for any major piece of legislation enacted in the past three decades, including the Affordable Care Act in 2009.

Even worse for the GOP, Public Policy Polling found that “by a 23 point margin voters say they’re less likely to vote for a member of Congress next year who supports it.”

Apparently, if we all just watched Fox News, we’d be cheering the GOP’s plan to permanently slash the corporate tax rate, make it harder for students to pay for college, and to decimate longterm funding for Medicare and Social Security.