Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday that the mainstream media wants Americans to "ignore their polls" about Donald Trump's State of the Union address from the prior night, noting the polls showed a generally positive response to the president's speech.
"All of these media people are trying to tell us to ignore their polls from last night," Limbaugh said on his show. "CNN polls will say 80 percent of the people liked it on CNN—70, 75 percent CBS liked it."
A CNN poll found that 48 percent of respondents who watched the speech had a "very positive" reaction to it, 22 percent had a "somewhat positive" reaction, 16 percent had a "somewhat negative" reaction, and 13 percent had a "very negative" reaction.
"And they're [the media] trying to tell us that doesn't matter because it's only people who watched the speech," Limbaugh said. "Oh, really? So a better poll would include people who didn't. Is that what you want us to believe, drive-by types?"
Limbaugh then played a clip of CBS host John Dickerson reporting Wednesday on the CBS poll on the State of the Union reaction.
"As CBS News poll shows, three out of four Americans who saw the speech approve of the president's message. Eight in 10 Americans who watched say they believe Mr. Trump was trying to unite the country rather than divide it," Dickerson said. "The audience, according to our poll, was 42 percent Republican and 25 percent Democrat."
The CBS poll showed that 81 percent of respondents said they felt Trump's speech united the country, while 19 percent said it was divisive. Fifty-two percent of those surveyed identify themselves as Trump supporters, 32 percent see themselves as Trump opponents, and 16 percent are somewhere in between the two.
"Eighty percent of Americans said they believe Trump was trying to unite the country," Limbaugh said.
"The president is going to seek unity, the president is going to cross the divide means different things to different people," Limbaugh added. "To the drive-by of the Democrats, it meant Trump was going to cave; it meant Trump was going to dial it back; it meant Trump was going to wander off his agenda reservation and embrace Democrat ideas."
"So that's the way the speech was portrayed all day yesterday, and that's the way it was portrayed last night, "Limbaugh said. "And then we got the speech, and folks, I'm telling you it was, I think, maybe the best State of the Union speech I've ever seen."