Trump Fires Pollsters After Leaked Internal Polls Show Him Losing To Biden In Key States

President Donald Trump fired several pollsters after internal polls were leaked showing him trailing Joe Biden in several important battleground states.

According to a Republican familiar with the matter, the pollsters that Trump let go included Michael Baselice, Adam Geller and Brett Lloyd. Both Baselice and Geller have been with Trump since his 2016 campaign, and are now expected to begin working with America First, a pro-Trump political action committee (PAC). Lloyd, who is president and CEO of The Polling Company, the former firm of White House counsel Kellyanne Conway, is not expected to continue working with any Trump-related entities.

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These terminations come after several news outlets, such as ABC, reported that Trump’s internal polling showed him several points behind lead Democratic candidates in states like Wisconsin and Michigan. This information was obtained as part of a leak of a 17-state poll conducted by Trump’s head polling operatives, such as Tony Fabrizio. As the specific numbers from the polls were released ahead of Trump’s visit to Iowa, an essential battleground state, the president grew increasingly angry over the leak of the surveys. While he had previously downplayed the accuracy of the data, he began to outright deny the information altogether, claiming that it was “incorrect polling,” and that the numbers were wrong. Not only did he himself dismiss the results, but Trump instructed his aides to lie about the polls and to instead claim that the president was doing very well.

The low support that Trump has in important swing states doesn’t bode well for the president, as he builds up to the official announcement of his reelection campaign. Trump is set to formally kick off his 2020 bid in Orlando, Florida, at a massive 20,000 person event. The president hopes to use a mega-sized rally to draw some of the attention away from the 2020 Democratic field, which has been the focus of much of the recent news cycle.