America-Hater-in-Chief Donald Trump is very upset that Fox has taken time out from its propaganda to briefly report on a legit poll that finds he’s losing badly to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020. Sad!
To be sure, FoxNews.com thoughtfully buried the information in the ninth paragraph of its article about the hypothetical matchup. The article’s headline read, “Fox News Poll: Biden holds commanding lead for Democratic nomination,” thus also obscuring the information that might unsettle Trump’s fragile ego.
But more likely, Trump got the news from his most trusted morning advisers: Fox & Friends. As Mediaite noted, that show covered the poll this morning with informal Trump adviser and weekend Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth.
Cohost Steve Doocy opened a discussion about the 2020 race on message: “A brand new Fox News poll shows that Joe Biden is leadin’ the pack substantially,” Doocy said. Dropping the “g” in “leading” added a folksy touch.
After a round of discussion about the poll’s significance – including a supposed slip of the tongue by Hegseth suggesting Biden’s campaign is flatulent, cohost Brian Kilmeade got to the bad news for Trump: “Head to head with the president, he [Biden] beats President Trump by 10 points,” Kilmeade said. “Sanders beats him by 6, Warren and Harris, basically a flat-footed tie.”
“Early, early, early,” Hegseth said dismissively. (FiveThirtyEight.com notes that early primary polls can be rather predictive of the eventual nominee but finds early general election head-to-head polls “pretty much worthless.”)
Nevertheless, Trump needed a waaahhh-mbulance after hearing the news on a show he has good reason to expect will spend all three hours pumping up his fragile ego:
....the fact that I have gone through a three year vicious Witch Hunt, perpetrated by the Lamestream Media in Collusion with Crooked and the Democrat Party, there can be NO WAY, with the greatest Economy in U.S. history, that I can be losing to the Sleepy One. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2019
By the way, while Fox’s poll questions and its reporting on poll results are frequently biased, its polling methodology is top of the line. The network’s polls earn a rare “A” grade from FiveThirtyEight.com.
Watch the segment that probably triggered Trump below, from the July 26, 2019 Fox & Friends.
(Trump caricature by DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons license)
The media is trying to push candidates with these polls, and that is dangerous for the Democrats. Trump and the GOP want Biden. Old white guy vs. old white guy. Draw. They want no part of Harris. And if Democrats nominate Biden, they will likely lose.
The South Carolina polls are also bogus. All this nonsense about Biden having the black voters support. Does anyone really think South Carolina is voting Biden over Harris? Not happening. Look at Obama crushing Clinton in 2008 when he was in single digits at this point.
If Trump wins, it’s going to be the regular media who puts him there, just like 2016. And he’ll still complain about the bias. He plays the regular media perfectly. They all come running when he calls them.