Just when you thought CNN had run out of things to blame on President Trump, CNN This Morning host sat down with The Atlantic staff writer Faith Hill on her The Assignment podcast to blame the Trump Administration for dating app fatigue.
Cornish introduced a clip of her most recent episode:
Okay, dating apps can be brutal. Many of you who use them say you're fed up. A Forbes survey finds that 78 percent of dating app users felt emotionally, mentally, or physically exhausted by them. So, what's fueling the frustration? Well, politics is part of it. MAGA and other ideologies shape the outlook of some of the people you might be finding on the apps, and that is becoming a deal breaker for some daters. We were talking with The Atlantic’s Faith Hill in this week's episode of The Assignment about the consequences of searching for love online.
As a general rule, both liberals and conservatives want their partner to share their values, but right away, Cornish only wanted to focus on one side of the political spectrum’s supposed toxicity. In the podcast clip, she asked Hill, “In what ways have political trends poisoned the dating well?”
Like Cornish, Hill only focused on one side of the relationship, “So, I think that we are in a very tricky political and cultural moment for dating. Just because, you know, men and women are kind of growing further apart in a lot of ways and especially among young people. And you see that young men are moving further to the right. Young women growing more progressive, and I think for a lot of women in particular, it can just sort of feel like, ‘This is not a time where I trust men. I feel respected by men. I don't necessarily want to go out and meet strangers who are men.’”
Turning to Trump, Hill added:
We have an administration that is, you know, stripping away reproductive rights and protections against gender discrimination. And you can see in surveys that there is this kind of, resentment among a lot of men, kind of a backlash to MeToo, to a backlash to women gaining financial independence, going to college more than men now, where, you know, there's among Gen Z, even, far more women who identify as feminists than men, so I think there is a real feeling among women that the sort of larger political backdrop—it’s seeping into individual relationships and making it really hard to trust people.
While Cornish and Hill were only interested in giving the liberal woman’s perspective, conservatives, including conservative women, could give counterarguments to the “backlash” narrative. But also: not everything has to be political.
Dating apps can be great. They allow shy and introverted people a way to meet other people, and some people do meet their spouses on them, but like so much modern technology, they can be negative as well. As opposed to traditional dating methods where you get to know someone and then go on a first date, a first date with someone you met on an app is also your first time getting to know them, and men and women can have unrealistic, Hollywood-inspired expectations about “sparks” after only one date. And because most people who have unsuccessful first dates will never see each other again, ghosting the other person becomes easier than telling them it wasn’t meant to be.
Here is a transcript for the August 21 show:
CNN This Morning
8/21/2025
6:21 AM ET
AUDIE CORNISH: Okay, dating apps can be brutal. Many of you who use them say you're fed up. A Forbes survey finds that 78 percent of dating app users felt emotionally, mentally, or physically exhausted by them. So, what's fueling the frustration? Well, politics is part of it. MAGA and other ideologies shape the outlook of some of the people you might be finding on the apps, and that is becoming a deal breaker for some daters. We were talking with The Atlantic’s Faith Hill in this week's episode of The Assignment about the consequences of searching for love online.
[PODCAST CLIP]
CORNISH: In what ways have political trends poisoned the dating well?
FAITH HILL: So, I think that we are in a very tricky political and cultural moment for dating. Just because, you know, men and women are kind of growing further apart in a lot of ways and especially among young people. And you see that young men are moving further to the right. Young women growing more progressive, and I think for a lot of women in particular, it can just sort of feel like, "This is not a time where I trust men. I feel respected by men. I don't necessarily want to go out and meet strangers who are men."
We have an administration that is, you know, stripping away reproductive rights and protections against gender discrimination. And you can see in surveys that there is this kind of, resentment among a lot of men, kind of a backlash to MeToo, to a backlash to women gaining financial independence, going to college more than men now, where, you know, there's among Gen Z, even, far more women who identify as feminists than men, so I think there is a real feeling among women that the sort of larger political backdrop—it’s seeping into individual relationships and making it really hard to trust people.
