Ron Sachs/ZUMA
President Donald Trump on Monday accused one of his favorite media outlets of spreading “fake news” after Fox News anchor Bret Baier reported on the network’s own polling that showed the president trailing or tied with a number of top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination.
That survey, which showed Joe Biden leading Trump by 10 points, was the latest in a wave of negative polling for Trump ahead of the president’s official reelection launch event in Florida on Tuesday.
While lashing out at Baier, Trump complained that Fox polls “are always bad for me” and that they had been in the 2016 election, as well. “Something weird going on at Fox,” he wrote.
.@FoxNews Polls are always bad for me. They were against Crooked Hillary also. Something weird going on at Fox. Our polls show us leading in all 17 Swing States. For the record, I didn’t spend 30 hours with @abcnews, but rather a tiny fraction of that. More Fake News @BretBaier
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 17, 2019
After weeks of seething over the Mueller report, Trump was faced with new frustrations last week after the New York Times reported that the president’s internal numbers showed him trailing Biden in several key states. Despite denying the existence of the poll, the Trump campaign later fired the pollsters whose survey data had apparently leaked.
General election polls, this early in the game, are pretty meaningless. But then again, few things mean more to Trump than his own popularity. His fixation continued into Tuesday morning when he claimed, without evidence, that the media was purposely ignoring the large crowds gathering outside his upcoming rally in Florida. “People have never seen anything like it (unless you play a guitar),” he tweeted.
