Trump Already Lying About His Own Campaign's Dismal Poll Numbers
What do you do when reality doesn't match up with how you'd like things to be? For most of us, we either pursue some form of escapism (binge-watch television, drink to excess, book tickets to the International Space Station, etc.), or we just knuckle down and admit that reality can be a real bummer at times. Hey, that's life, right? But for Donald Trump, the easiest response is to just go right ahead and attempt to redefine reality into what he'd like it to be. After all, if millions of his followers can be hoodwinked into believing something that is patently false just on his say-so, then that gives it a sort of reality all on its own, doesn't it?
Case in point was the recent report by the New York Times that, when faced with rather dismal internal campaign polling numbers which showed him losing several key states to the Democrats (Michigan, Florida, etc.), Trump instructed his campaign staff to just outright lie about the numbers. Furthermore, Trump then began insisting that not only was he ahead in every single state they've ever polled, but also that Trump's numbers are actually now the best they've ever been. Trump is nothing if not a big fan of superlatives. But outside Trumpworld, this has to be seen as nothing short of a world-class cabin cruise down that famed river in Egypt, "De Nile."
Tellingly, what at least one of these trusted campaign aides did was to ignore Trump's directive to deny reality by flat-out lying to reporters, and instead just go ahead and leak the bad polling directly to the reporters -- as well as the amusing tale of how Trump reacted to it. This is rather significant, since people working on Trump's re-election campaign are purely political creatures and are theoretically supposed to be the most loyal of the loyal. But Trump's denialism was a bridge too far -- and the election is still well over a year away.
Trump, of course, fears one thing above all others: appearing weak. In his own mind, Trump is the perpetual winner and everyone else is a stone-cold loser, period. Any reality which denies this must not, in fact, be reality. This is fallacious two ways -- it is not only post hoc ergo propter hoc, but Trump is substituting his own post hoc in a rather ad hoc fashion: "This thing that I made up happened, therefore everything's going swimmingly," as it were.
Latin insults aside, though, it has always been obvious that anything which Trump determines not to be worthy of inclusion in his own reality must be denied as "fake," so his egotistical house of cards doesn't collapse. He lashes out when this happens, and tellingly begins accusing everyone else of exactly the weakness the inconvenient reality is exposing. Trump's not so ignorant that he doesn't even know what is in the deal he supposedly just singlehandedly cut with Mexico, in fact, Joe Biden is the "dummy." Trump's poll numbers aren't showing he'd lose the Electoral College, they are in fact the best numbers ever.
In general, Trump isn't a big fan of polling. He regularly "skews" the polls to say what he thinks they should be saying. As far as he's concerned, his presidential job approval numbers aren't in fact the worst average recorded for any president since polling began, they are in actuality a whole lot higher because the economy's doing so well. So in his own mind, Trump just goes ahead and adds 15 or 20 points, and then his job approval comes out to where he thinks it really should be. Voilà! Problem solved.
Trump supporters will respond to this criticism with some form of: "All the polls were wrong in 2016, and Trump won!" Well, no. Not really. The national polling was actually pretty accurate, and Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by pretty close to what the national polling said would happen. It was the state-level polling (which is almost always less accurate than national polling) which fell down in a handful of key states, which lost Clinton the Electoral College. But nuance matters not -- Trump "beat the polls" once, therefore all polling is suspect or just flat-out fake news. Which conveniently means Trump is free to make up his own polling reality and most of his rabid base will believe him.
A lot of conventional wisdom surrounding presidential elections has gone by the wayside in the past decade. This even predated Trump. Barack Obama's job approval was polling below 50 percent in the run-up to his re-election, and the unemployment rate -- while steadily decreasing -- was still higher than it had been for any successful re-election bid in modern history. Thus, he should have lost. But he didn't. Trump, of course, redefined all kinds of presidential election norms as well. So it is indeed tough to predict what will happen in 2020 using the tried-and-true yardsticks of the past.
The economy is good, and unemployment is low. This is supposed to virtually guarantee re-election for an incumbent president. But this time around, large swaths of the public just does not give Trump any credit at all for the economy's performance. So this metric may not work as it usually does. Trump's approval rating is not just historically low, it's incredibly low for a president with a good economy. Obama's job approval rating was in the high 40s when he got re-elected (it did tick up to just over 50 percent in the final days before the election), so perhaps Trump can manage the same trick with approval ratings in the low 40s?
But these are tangential polls to how the electorate is going to vote. They may influence voters' decisions, but they are not an actual measure of how people say they're going to vote. The first polls which attempt to measure this are just starting to come in, and they paint a very negative picture of Trump's chances of winning again.
In head-to-head matchups, the leading Democratic candidates are all beating Trump right now. A recent poll showed Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden ahead of Trump by a whopping 13 points nationwide. Biden is also beating Trump in individual state polling in some very key states (Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, etc.). One poll even showed Biden taking Texas, which is pretty jaw-dropping.
Of course, these are but the first polls in a marathon race. The Democrats are a long way from choosing their nominee, and we're over a year from the actual voting. A lot could happen, and things could change. With the whirlwind of chaos that is the Trump White House, nobody alive can accurately predict where things will stand in a year's time.
Even so, Biden's current lead is notable because if it held until Election Day, Biden would likely win in an enormous landslide. And while he's got the biggest lead over Trump, the other Democrats leading the party's pack also would beat Trump pretty handily. That's a good place for Democrats to be right now, obviously. Which is why it should come as no surprise that Trump (and his campaign team) are already getting very worried about their prospects (delusionally so, in Trump's case).
Even though we are pretty far out from the finish line, I feel confident enough after hearing the news of Trump's order to lie about his polls to predict one probability. My guess is that Trump will deal with his own campaign's pollsters just as he's dealt with anyone within his administration who displeases him (or dares on a regular basis to contradict his own personal reality). That is to say, Trump will fire them. Trump will quite likely go through an increasing number of campaign pollsters, unless he just decides that he doesn't even need internal polling at all and chooses to just wing it without any pesky numbers geeks repeatedly telling him bad news.
Please remember that the polls Trump told people to lie about were not "fake news" polls (as he would put it). They were not polls conducted by nonpartisan public polling institutions or media organizations which were released for public consumption. These were internal campaign polls -- supposedly closely-held data designed to inform the campaign about the state of the race. The Trump campaign bought and paid for these polls, in other words. This means Trump can't accuse the pollsters themselves of "left-wing bias," as he so regularly does with almost all of the public polling institutions (with the exception of Rasmussen, of course).
These were state-level polls designed to inform Trump of the reality on the ground in (reportedly) 17 states. Trump -- obviously -- didn't like the hard data they produced. He tried to spin it by telling his campaign staff to lie about the picture they painted. This didn't work, since one of them immediately leaked the whole embarrassing story to the press. If this sort of thing continues, to square Trump's version of reality with his campaign efforts, the only real choice he will have is to fire the pollster who keeps bringing him dismal polling numbers. If this happens a number of times, then respected pollsters (even Republican outfits) are going to get very leery of agreeing to conduct polls for his campaign. Which, ultimately, might lead to Trump deciding that all polls lie (since they don't show him winning by the landslide he is so confident he deserves), and making the decision to forgo internal polling altogether. It certainly seems unthinkable (by conventional political reasoning) that any modern presidential campaign could operate without internal polling data, but then again Trump has done all kinds of unthinkable things before.
If Joe Biden and the rest of the Democratic candidates were smart, they'd immediately start mercilessly taunting Trump's own internal polling operation. Call him a "loser" repeatedly, that might get under his skin enough for him to walk away from polling altogether: "His own pollster keeps telling him what a loser he is!" It's certainly worth a shot, since Trump operating without the safety net of polling data would almost assuredly be a lot easier to beat than a Trump campaign still plugged into reality, no matter how tenuously.
-- Chris Weigant
Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
All Weigantians need to go to Huffpo ASAP and read about Stephanopolous' interview with Trump, where Steph asks him if he would accept "dirt" on his 2020 opponent (thinking of course, about Jr's willingness to accept "dirt" on Hillary in the 2016 campaign).
Trump says naturally, (paraphrase)"Of course I would, as would any politicician of any party"!
Gives rise to an interesting suggestion for the 2 dozen Democratics seeking the 2020 nomination: IMMEDIATELY call Putin and confess every moral sin, every extra-marital affair, every dishonest action, every character flaw, every moral transgression of your life. Then, if it turns out that the Democratic party actually can find a way to make it illegal to get "dirt" on your opponent from foreigners, Trump will be impeached and YOUR sins and transgressions will be forever concealed and protected from exposure during the campaign!!
Gawdamity, am I smart, or what!!!
The firings will continue until morale improves.
Well, no. Not really. The national polling was actually pretty accurate,
Really??? The national polls that said Hillary had a 98% chance of being president!???
They were "actually pretty accurate"??? :D
Com'on, CDub...
You can't put enough lipstick on that pig to make it presentable...
Allow me to let you in on a little secret... Trump supporters don't do polls...
So, any poll that you like, just think of them not having any Trump supporters in them..
So, THAT is why they say what you want to hear...
And I was just kidding about it being a secret.. Since the 2016 election everyone not indoctrinated by Party dogma KNOWS that Trump supporters don't do polls...
But, by all means.. continue to tout the polls.. It'll be 2016 all over again come Nov 2020... :D
Actually 2020 is going to be a LOT worse.. Because ya'll knew better and STILL thought Trump was going to lose... :D
Case in point was the recent report by the New York Times that
NY Grime???
'nuff said...
Com'on... The NY TIMES flat out LIED when it said it wasn't Anti-Trump..
You simply cannot trust ANYTHING the NY TIMES says because they only say what you want to hear..
All Weigantians need to go to Huffpo ASAP and read about Stephanopolous' interview with Trump, where Steph asks him if he would accept "dirt" on his 2020 opponent (thinking of course, about Jr's willingness to accept "dirt" on Hillary in the 2016 campaign).
Trump says naturally, (paraphrase)"Of course I would, as would any politicician of any party"!
Just like Hillary got dirt on Trump from the Ukranians...
But THAT is OK... perfectly acceptable because HILLARY has a -D after her name... :eyeroll:
Hannity praises Trump's 'genius setup' against Dems, claims president setting trap with 'nonstory' about foreign info
Fox News' Sean Hannity supported President Trump's comments Wednesday that he would be willing to listen to a foreign government if they approached him with information on a political opponent, calling it a "genius setup" by the president.
"In many ways that was a genius setup because the media mob will fall right into his trap, breathlessly spewing fake, phony outrage over a nonstory for days," Hannity said during his monologue on "Hannity" on Wednesday night.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hannity-praises-trumps-comments-about-listening-to-foreign-government-genius-set-up-for-dems
I have to say this for Dims.. They just LOVE walking into President Trump's traps... :D
"They are worried about obstruction of justice but only if it's Trump, not Hillary. They are worried about underlying crimes but only if it's Trump, not Hillary. They are worried about believing but only if it bludgeons Trump, not the lieutenant governor of ... the Commonwealth of Virginia over serious sex allegations."
-Sean Hannity
Yep.. In a nutshell...
If Democrats didn't have double standards, they would have no standards at all...
It's **ALL** about the '-D' or '-R' after the person's name... Nothing else matters..
A guy with a -D after his name can do blackface, admit to infanticide and it's all good.. BECAUSE he has a -D after his name..
:eyeroll:
Here's the thing about your love affair with polls, people..
Biden polls so well against President Trump NOW..
But that's not going to be the same Biden that will poll against President Trump in Sep of 2020... We saw how well Trump demolished Crooked Hillary...
If Harris is in the race in Sep of 2020, it's not going to be the same Harris that is polling so well against President Trump right now..
I don't remember who, but SOMEONE here said that only a FOOL would look at polls now and think they have any meaning for Nov of 2020...
But, like I said.. Ya'all continue to tout your polls (at least the polls that say what you want to hear) Get yer hopes up AGAIN... And then, early in the morning of 4 Nov 2020, we we all gather here once again and celebrate President Trump's victory..
JUST like we did in the early morning back on that fateful day, back in Nov of 2016... :D
Do ya'all REALLY think ya'all can handle ANOTHER devastating and decimating loss???
President Trump enjoys Reagan numbers amongst Republicans. This is fact...
And, once Dumbocrats flip the Impeachment switch, as ya'all KNOW they will do...
Independents will flock to President Trump by the tens of millions...
And there is your landslide victory for Trump... er.. excuse me.. PRESIDENT Trump.. in November of 2020...
You heard it here first.. :D
And, of all the people here, who has the BEST track record of picking the winner in an election where Trump is a candidate??
Why, I think it's me!! :D
"IT WAS ME!!!!"
-Jim Carrey, LIAR LIAR
:D heh
Remember when ya'all condemned President Trump over his payments to HorseFace??? Ya'all called it campaign finance violations??
Ilhan Omar's 'credibility' questioned by hometown newspaper in stinging editorial
Ilhan Omar is facing some fresh criticism from her very own backyard.
Rep. Omar, D-Minn., was the subject of a stinging editorial in Minnesota's Star Tribune on Wednesday in the wake of her recent campaign finance violations -- with the paper suggesting that it was just the latest "misstep by the first-term congresswoman."
"U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar is back in the news again, and not in a good way," the editorial began. "The former state representative who won a seat in Congress last fall continues to be dogged by past missteps, this time eight violations of Minnesota campaign-finance law that will cost her nearly $3,500 in reimbursements and civil penalties."
Minnesota campaign finance officials ruled last week that Omar owed her campaign committee nearly $3,500, as well as a $500 civil penalty to the state, after using committee funds for personal travel and help on her tax returns.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/minn-paper-says-omars-credibility-hurt-after-campaign-finance-violation-ruling
I am SUUURE ya'all will rush to condemn Illan Omar's campaign finance violations with equal vigor and hysteria.....
Right???
Oh yea...That's right.. Omar has a -D after her name so HER actions are perfectly acceptable... :eyeroll:
It's all about the '-D' or '-R' after the person's name..
Nothing else matters...
END OF WATCH
Deputy Joseph Gilbert Solano
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Office, California
End of Watch: Tuesday, June 13, 2019
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/13839e8d10b9303c8d9aee50576e15b15f4844be91d15073a21097a85b780c50.jpg
This is absurd, and the absurdity isn’t confined to coverage of Bernie Sanders. It’s early, and stupid, to be making pronouncements about any candidate’s viability.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/campaign-conventional-wisdom-dead-2020-election-sanders-846978/
Even President Trump's....
ESPECIALLY President Trump's
Oh look, Neil...
I guess CW's commentary gots me all riled up again, eh?? :D
But nuance matters not -- Trump "beat the polls" once, therefore all polling is suspect or just flat-out fake news.
Yea, pretty much...
When you have your polls that say Hillary is a shoe-in for POTUS at 98% and Hillary LOSES...???
Put another way...
If you make a $10,000 investment and you are told there is a 98% chance that you will DOUBLE that $10K and you end up LOSING all of your money...???
Are you going to trust that advice again???
Of course not.. No SANE person would..
And yet, that is EXACTLY what ya'all are doing..
Trusting the exact same polls that were factually and INCREDIBLY and IMPRESSIVELY WRONG...
"Failed! Failed! IMPRESSIVELY failed!!"
-NASA Doctor, ARMAGEDDON
Let's face some reality here, people.. Ya'all only believe the polls because they are saying what you want to hear..
donald trump meets the "prince of whales." marine mammal not pictured.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/13/spouting-off-trump-boasts-of-meeting-prince-of-whales
donald trump meets the "prince of whales." marine mammal not pictured.
And Obama bragged about campaigning in all 57 states...
:D
"It's so against any sense of decency. There is a sense of decency about fruit from the forbidden tree. Everybody in this country should be totally appalled by what he said last night ... so totally unethical, that he doesn't even realize."
-Nancy Pelosi
And yet, Hillary had a direct pipeline from Russian intelligence for opposition research on Candidate Trump..
Apparently, it's perfectly acceptable for a DEMOCRAT to obtain oppo research from foreign sources..
But it's NOT acceptable when a guy with a -R after his name does it..
Pure hypocrisy....
Trump just invited Congress to impeach him
Much ink has been spilled about whether President Donald Trump committed a criminal and impeachable offense by obstructing justice. That question deserves extensive debate, but another critical question - the ultimate question, really - is not whether he committed a crime, but whether he is even fit for office in the first place. And that question - the heart of an impeachment inquiry - turns upon whether the president abuses his power and demonstrates an unfitness to serve under the defining principles of our Constitution.
On Tuesday, Trump gave us direct evidence of his contempt toward the most foundational precept of our democracy - that no person, not even the president, is above the law. He filed a brief in the nation's second-most-important court that takes the position that Congress cannot investigate the president, except possibly in impeachment proceedings. It's a spectacularly anti-constitutional brief, and anyone who harbors such attitudes toward our Constitution's architecture is not fit for office. Trump's brief is nothing if not an invitation to commencing impeachment proceedings that, for reasons set out in the Mueller report, should have already commenced.
https://www.greenwichtime.com/opinion/article/Trump-just-invited-Congress-to-impeach-him-13975971.php
There ya go, Dumbocrats.. An engraved invitation...
But Dumbocrats won't do it.. They know that real patriotic Americans LOVE President Trump and, if Dims are stoopid enough to impeach, it will be DUMBOCRATS who pay the political price..
Democrats will LOSE and they know it.. THAT is why they are scared to impeach..
But, here's the kick in the ass...
If Dumbocrats DON'T impeach, then their base will abandon them by the tens of millions...
Millions and millions of Democrats will stay home on election day 2020....
So, once again, Dumbocrats have managed to stumble in to a PERFECT lose-lose situation..
President Trump has played the Dumbocrats once again.. :D
"I was like, looking all around and I said to Hollywood, 'Where did he go!!!? Where did he go!!!??' And Hollywood is all confused and like said, 'Where did WHO go!!?'..."
-Goose, TOP GUN
:D
Wow. Did you ever press a button..
The obvious question is: will Putin try to play the same game in 2020 that he played in 2016?
It'll be MUCH tougher this time around, as there are eyes and ears alerted to the possibility. Assange is now in jail.
Then again, that hasn't stopped him in Europe, where most of his campaign-meddling has continued full-bore. He obviously believes that this makes him stronger.
And we now have Trump's conclusion: he'll take anything the Russians can give him, again. And he said it nice and loud (and publicly) so that they can hear him. Again.
So the game for the 2020 election is afoot. Man the battle-stations and hold on!
The obvious question is: will Putin try to play the same game in 2020 that he played in 2016?
No, the obvious question is, did Putin play the game in 2018???
And we now have Trump's conclusion: he'll take anything the Russians can give him, again.
Just like Hillary took everything the Russians could give her..
Funny how you don't have a problem with that..
The obvious question is: will Putin try to play the same game in 2020 that he played in 2016?
Even if he does play the game in 2020... Like in 2016, it won't have any impact on the results of the election...
And YOU will actively encourage Russia meddling... If it means the Dumbocrat candidate has a chance of winning..
Michale [22]: That's just a whole string of hogwash. You've got nothing. You're watching Trump and Putin just like the rest of us, only you're hoping for the best. Good for you.
But you know that Trump is weird with Putin. Nobody knows what they talk about, that's all secret. Even to the folks with the clearances. Isn't that weird?
And they've never explained to me why Trump was so happy to have the Russians into the oval office.
I mean, look at him: he's giddy. Why?
Some say, it's because he'd just fired Comey. Told the Russians that he wouldn't be a pain anymore.
But no. He's into the Russians.
There were better than 100 contacts that Mueller knew about between the Trump campaign and the Russians, in addition to a high-level influence and spying campaign. If Trump didn't know it was all happening, then why is he trying so hard to cover it?
Trump has called for Hillary to be investigated for receiving dirt on him from a foreign government, but why would he call for her to be locked up for things that he says are not illegal when he does them?
Point is that Trump just gave the world an open invitation to present him with any dirt it can find on his opponents. He knows that the DOJ’s policy of not indicting a sitting president is his “stay-out-of-jail” card as long as he stays in office...and what better way to stay in office than to have other countries dig up the dirt on his opponents to help him get re-elected for him!
Michale [22]: That's just a whole string of hogwash.
No.. Your Russia Collusion was a whole string of hogwash...
Mueller hisself SAID so...
But you know that Trump is weird with Putin. Nobody knows what they talk about, that's all secret. Even to the folks with the clearances. Isn't that weird?
No more weird than Hillary's contacts with commercial Russian interests...
There were better than 100 contacts that Mueller knew about between the Trump campaign and the Russians, in addition to a high-level influence and spying campaign. If Trump didn't know it was all happening, then why is he trying so hard to cover it?
He's not.. You just see commies under every mattress..
Here are the facts.
Russian interference had NO EFFECT on the election..
Hillary lost the election all on her own..
THAT is the FACT that you simply can't handle..
Ya'all lost and ya'all are decimated so ya'all have to make up excuses to cover how decimated ya'all are...
Simple logic..
Here are the facts.
Russian interference had NO EFFECT on the election..
that's not a fact, it's an opinion. the fact is that there's no possible way of knowing whether or not russian online intel had any effect on the outcome of the election.
excuses? no, that'd be this guy:
https://thebestdemocracymoneycanbuy.com/
that's not a fact, it's an opinion.
No.. It's a fact.. Stated by everyone from the Mueller indictments to Odumbo..
the fact is that there's no possible way of knowing whether or not russian online intel had any effect on the outcome of the election.
And yet, Odumbo AND Mueller stated explicitly that there was NO EFFECT on the election..
So, if you want to call them liars, be my guest...
But that doesn't bode well for their credibility in other endeavors, does it??
that's not what they said. what they said is there's no way to prove any effect. that being the case, the president is entitled to the presumption of innocence. a hostile foreign power, not so much.
that's not what they said. what they said is there's no way to prove any effect.
And considering the resources brought to bear, if there was an effect, it would have been found...
Obama himself said the election was free, fair and legal..
You want to argue with him??
Be my guest..
From a Mueller Indictment..
“There’s no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.”
That the vote count was changed or that the result was affected wasn't even alleged, let alone happened..
Hillary lost because she was a shitty candidate..
That's the beginning and end of the story..
But, let's analyze the claim..
Was the Democrat Party gains in 2018 the result of Russia meddling???