The United States will soon hit a total of 100,000 Coronavirus deaths, and sources like the University of Washington estimate that tens of thousands more Americans could die in coming weeks and months due to the virus, but President Donald Trump seems most concerned about his poll numbers. This week, Fox News released a poll that had presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden up by 8 percent on the national level, and this Friday on Twitter, Trump promptly freaked out. He suggested that the network has a “fake pollster,” implying that he believes that any poll numbers that have him losing are automatically “fake.”
He belted out:
‘@FoxNews should fire their Fake Pollster. Never had a good Fox Poll!.. Why doesn’t @FoxNews put up the CNBC POLL or the (believe it or not!) @CNN Poll? Hope Roger A is looking down and watching what has happened to this once beautiful creation!’
.@FoxNews should fire their Fake Pollster. Never had a good Fox Poll! https://t.co/joHfkQwd9L
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 22, 2020
Why doesn’t @FoxNews put up the CNBC POLL or the (believe it or not!) @CNN Poll? Hope Roger A is looking down and watching what has happened to this once beautiful creation!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 22, 2020
To be clear — the late former Fox News chief Roger Ailes was ousted from his role at the network after the public revelation of years and years of sexual harassment that he perpetrated at the network. Yet, Trump seems to think that Ailes is quite literally some kind of heavenly person. In other words, the president isn’t even attempting to hide his pseudomessianic, cultish reverence for his political side.
In a recent CNBC poll that Trump seems to reference, Biden’s national level lead was just 3 percent, which is barely more than the poll’s margin of error. Over in the most recent CNN poll results that Trump seems to reference, Biden’s national lead was 5 percent. In the most recent average from RealClearPolitics of national level polling, Biden leads by an average of 5.5 percent. Trump has not led at a single point in the time that RealClearPolitics has been maintaining an average of national level polling. Trump seems to have deluded himself into believing that any pollster which reports Biden with a significant lead is peddling fake results — but that’s just egomaniacal nonsense.
Check out Twitter’s response below:
