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Trump Campaign Derides 'Fake' Fox News Poll That Shows Biden Ahead

Trump Campaign Derides 'Fake' Fox News Poll That Shows Biden Ahead

Trump campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley on Friday called polling from Fox News showing Donald Trump behind Joe Biden "fake," prompting a quick rebuke from Fox host Brian Kilmeade.

Gidley alleged that Fox's pollsters "oversample Democrats," echoing allegations made by Trump, his administration, and his reelection campaign.

"I know the people who do the polls. They don't do a fake, they do a really good job," replied Kilmeade.The exchange was unusual, as the conservative Fox News continues to be one of Trump's most stalwart allies.

Recent polling by Fox has shown Joe Biden with an 8-point national lead over Trump among registered voters. Fox's polling also shows Biden ahead of Trump in key swing states such as Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. Fox's polls are in line with other national polls showing a consistent Biden lead.

From the July 24 edition of Fox & Friends:

HOGAN GIDLEY: You touched on some polls. Most of those are fake, I'll be honest, they oversample Democrats.

But let's also talk about another instance here. We've had more than 1.1 billion views across our social media platforms for Donald Trump. He's not even really on those social media platforms all that much. Joe Biden, however, comes out the other day for a Q-and-A, he promotes it, he's on camera, and he has 19 people watching it at one time. I think 17 of those were network news anchors and reporters just trying to figure out how to donate. The other two were staffers.

The fact is, the enthusiasm, the excitement is all on our side, and we know this. Our supporters will stand through rain, sleet, snow, hail, and crawl across broken glass to vote for Donald Trump. Joe Biden's supporters won't even click on a link to watch him do a Q-and-A. It's absolutely embarrassing. We have the momentum, we know we're going to do well in November.

BRIAN KILMEADE, Fox News: I just, I say, I know the people who do the polls. They don't do a fake, they do a really good job. They might not be accurate in the end, I don't know, but they do a great job —

GIDLEY: Well doesn't accuracy determine – I know the people are great, but doesn't the accuracy determine how great it is?

KILMEADE: I'm not saying they're Nostradamus, but I'm just saying their math, and they're professionals, so I just – don't call the Fox News pollsters fake.

GIDLEY: Of course. Well, the methodology's flawed, at the very least, how's that?


Hogan Gidley

Trump Flack Insists Americans ‘Undoubtedly’ Better Off Than In 2016

Trump's campaign press secretary Hogan Gidley claimed on Wednesday that Americans were better off than they were three years ago. The Fox & Friends co-host interviewing him disputed that claim.

Gidley said in the interview that Trump plans to use an outdoor campaign rally in New Hampshire on Saturday to boast about his accomplishments.

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White House Says Trump ‘In Meetings’ As He Posts Enraged Tweets

White House Says Trump ‘In Meetings’ As He Posts Enraged Tweets

While the country continues to reel from two mass shootings that claimed the lives of more than 30 people over the weekend, Trump has other things on his mind.

White House spokesperson Hogan Gidley told reporters Tuesday afternoon that Trump has no public events on his schedule for the day because he’s “meeting with staff on a wide range of policies, having conversations in prepping for his trip to these communities.”

Trump is planning to visit El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, later this week — the two cities devastated by deadly shootings, although in his carefully scripted statement Monday, Trump referred to “those who perished in Toledo.”

“This is a very, very serious moment in our country’s history,” Gidley said Tuesday. “This president recognizes the gravity of this moment. You saw that manifest in his speech in the Diplomat Room.”

But as Gidley was insisting to reporters that Trump was focused on, and aware of, the gravity of the moment, Trump was rage-tweeting about Google’s involvement in the 2016 election and accusing it of “very illegal” behavior.

Trump claimed that Google CEO Sundar Pichai assured him “that they didn’t help Crooked Hillary over me in the 2016 Election, and that they are NOT planning to illegally subvert the 2020 Election despite all that has been said to the contrary.”

Trump’s citation for this allegation is Fox host Lou Dobbs, whom Trump frequently quotes on Twitter. Trump also cited Peter Schweizer, the right-wing author of the widely debunked book Clinton Cash, tweeting that Schweizer “stated with certainty that they suppressed negatives stories on Hillary Clinton, and boosted negative stories on Donald Trump. All very illegal. We are watching Google very closely!”

As Matt Gertz of Media Matters noted, Trump’s baseless theories about Google — which he was tweeting about earlier in the morning but for some reason decided to tweet again in the middle of the day — come from watching Dobbs on Fox.

“The Trump-Fox feedback loop is particularly salient in giving the president targets for his ire, and the network’s obsession with tech platform bias has repeatedly resulted in angry Trump tweets,” Gertz explained. “This is at least the third time Trump has responded to Fox segments by tweeting that his administration would take action against Google.”

It’s bad enough that Trump is baselessly accusing companies of “very illegal” behavior just because he saw it on Fox News. But for the White House to insist that Trump is in fact spending his day having conversations that show he understands the “gravity of the moment” — when that is demonstrably not true — is insulting to the American people and to those communities Trump is supposedly thinking about.

Published with permission of The American Independent.

Spokesman Says The President Isn’t ‘Going To Be Beholden To Courts Anymore’

Spokesman Says The President Isn’t ‘Going To Be Beholden To Courts Anymore’

A White House spokesman let slip something in a Fox News interview on Friday he probably didn’t mean to say.

Discussing the defeat in the Commerce Department’s effort to put a citizenship question on the 2020 census, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Hogan Gidley tried to argue — as President Donald Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr have said — that despite all appearances, the administration was actually vindicated by the Supreme Court.

“The Supreme Court even ruled this question could be on there, but it was impossible to get it on in time for printing,” Gidley said.

Of course, Gidley didn’t mention the fact that the reason it’s “impossible” to put the citizenship question on the Census in time is that the court found that the administration’s first attempt to include the question violated the law. Chief Justice John Roberts struck down the Commerce Department’s plans because it provided an apparently “contrived” justification for including the question. The impossibility only became a factor because the administration was so wildly inept and deceptive; it would have had to start all over again to add the question back to the Census because it is currently legally blocked from including it. And there just isn’t enough time for redo.

“We looked at inserts, we looked at all types of options,” Gidley continued. “And the president said: ‘Listen. I’m not going to be beholden to courts anymore. I have the legal authority to find out this information. The American people deserve to know it. So I’m moving forward with this method.”

Host Bill Hemmer ignored Gidley’s claim that the president claims he’s not “beholden” to the courts and quickly moved on. While it was likely just more pseudo machismo in the face of a humiliating defeat, the claim echoed what many feared when Barr and Trump suggested they might try to include a citizenship question on the Census despite the Supreme Court’s ruling. Trump ended up directing the administration to find other methods of calculating the number of American citizens.

Since even the Census Bureau long acknowledged that including the question on the decennial survey was not the best method for counting American citizens, it seems the administration’s real purpose for including the question in the first place was not really to get a quantitative answer. Rather, it sought to discourage response rates in regions heavily populated by Hispanics and immigrant groups, thus shifting political power from Democrats to Republicans.

Watch the clip below:

IMAGE: White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley.