With the media and public education, the left has its cake but can't eat it, too.

What is Donald Trump’s most important positive accomplishment? Some would say it’s the creation of a strong, America First populist movement. In my view, though, this is a mixed blessing, especially considering that the movement is led by a lawless opportunist and has some trappings of a cult of personality.

Some would say it’s Trump’s three appointments to the Supreme Court. There’s a good case for that one. However, I believe that certain other Republicans — Ted Cruz, for example — would have appointed three Justices at least as good as Trump’s.

I think Trump’s most important positive accomplishment is the discrediting of America’s mainstream media. According to Gallup, just 7 percent of Americans have "a great deal" of trust and confidence in the media and 27 percent have "a fair amount." Meanwhile, 28 percent of U.S. adults say they do not have very much confidence and 38 percent have none at all. This is the first time the percentage of Americans with no trust at all in the media is higher than the percentage with a great deal or a fair amount combined.

From these figures, I infer that only Democrats trust the media. Republicans and a small portion of Independents have no trust at all in the media and most Independents have only a little confidence in it.

Gallup’s results show a big plunge in media trust since 2018, and I think Trump deserves much of the credit (or blame, if you think this is a bad development). For years conservative talk show hosts and bloggers hammered away at the mainstream media with some success, the Gallup numbers show. But it took Donald Trump’s attacks — and at least as importantly, the media’s baseless attack on him in the phony Russia collusion story — for those trust numbers to fall to current levels.

As Trump might say, “only I” could have taken on the media with such strong effect.

In my view, the current lack of trust is a wonderful development. As I’ve tried to show on almost a daily basis for more than 20 years, the mainstream media should not be trusted. Most of the nation’s major news outlets are driven not by a quest for the truth, but by partisan and ideological agendas.

In fact, it’s now fashionable for media bigwigs to denounce objective news coverage as a white patriarchal construct that stands in the way of reporting that reflects the points of view and “lived experiences” of blacks and the LGBTQ. And the Washington Post’s executive editor admits that “many journalists want to make a difference on such issues as climate change, immigration and education.”

Have at it. But don’t expect anyone who doesn’t share left-wing views on climate change, immigration, and education” or who doesn’t give special weight to he points of view and experiences of preferred minority groups to trust you on controversial matters.

There’s another hoary institution that doesn’t deserve America’s trust — public education. Public schools are failing to educate American kids in big cities all over America. Baltimore and Chicago are but two examples.

In addition, public schools throughout much of the country are indoctrinating students in woke ideology — e.g. the view that whites are “privileged,” that America is incorrigibly racist, and that there are numerous genders from which kids are free to choose. Not only does such instruction waste valuable time, it is subversive. This doesn’t make it entirely unsuitable at the college level, but it should have no place in K-12 public education, and certainly in educating young children.

Finally, we shouldn’t forget the shameful performance of public schools during the pandemic. In this period, the education bureaucracy placed the interests of teachers ahead of the interests of students.

For all of these reasons, I’m happy to report that confidence in public schools is plummeting. Last year, a Gallup poll found that Americans’ belief in grade-school teachers’ honesty dropped to an all-time low. Only 64 percent of adults said they they believe these teachers are truthful and have ethical standards. That’s down from a high of 75 percent in 2020 during the pandemic. Another Gallup poll found that just 28 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in public schools. That’s the second lowest this figure has been since Gallup began asking this question in 1973.

More evidence of this trend can be found in the rise of home schooling. Hundreds of thousands of students have started being home schooled in the last three years. Apparently, home schooling is becoming something of an industry. It no longer consists entirely of parents teaching their own kids at home. Now, there are family co-ops and even small businesses that teach kids outside the home and outside of schools.

Not all of this out-of-school instruction is going to be successful. Eventually, the market place will sort things out, but in the meantime some students will not be well served.

Yet, it’s difficult for me to believe that parents who have taken control of their kids’ education — whether by teaching them directly or by having others they trust perform the instruction — will do a worse job of it than the failing public schools they leave behind.

The left has marched through a great many of our institutions. Its takeover of the media and so many of our public schools has probably been the most ominous of its successes.

I don’t doubt that the left views the resulting lack of trust in these two institutions as a price well worth paying. But it’s heartening to know that the price has been exacted and is steep.