Intelligence community sweats as Americans lose trust in government

Thanks to fake news, propaganda and politics, Americans are growing less likely to believe what government officials tell them– and it has the intelligence community worried.

That’s according to a tidbit from a recently declassified threat assessment which suggests governments throughout the world, not just the U.S., are going to have an increasingly difficult time convincing citizens their leaders have the right plans to tackle societal issues.

From the report: “Challenges from urbanization and migration will persist, while the effects of air pollution, inadequate water, and climate change on human health and livelihood will become more noticeable. Domestic policy responses to such issues will become more difficult—especially for democracies—as publics become less trusting of authoritative information sources.”

While government insiders will likely jump to “fake news” as the culprit for waning trust in government here in the U.S., the decline began long before our officials began trying to convince us that Russians are brainwashing large swaths of the nation’s populace with daily social media posts.

In fact, data from Pew Research shows that trust in government in the U.S. has been on a downward trajectory since the Eisenhower administration, reaching historic lows in the past few years.

The latest data out from the polling agency last year showed that an embarrassing 3 percent of Americans feel confident that Washington does what is right “just about always” and only 15 percent expect government to get it right “most of the time.”

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