Trump Reportedly Instructed Aides To Lie About Internal Polls That Showed Him Losing To Biden

President Donald Trump told aides to deny that his own internal polling showed him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in key states, according to a report by the New York Times.

The internal polls showed the president trailing Biden in several states that are essential to victory in 2020, such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. When the polls, conducted in 17 states by Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio, later leaked, Trump instructed his staff to claim that other data showed him beating Biden.

The “other data” that Trump referred to were polls by Rasmussen, a polling company that has been known to skew to the right. In a recent tweet, the president boasted that his approval rating was at 50%, according to Rasmussen. While it seems confusing to be proud of the support of only half of the country, Trump’s previous approval ratings have been even worse, making 50% a relative victory for the New York tycoon.

Even this claim isn’t much to be proud of, as Rasmussen was the least accurate of the 32 national polling organization when it came to the 2018 midterm elections. It predicted that the Republicans would win nationally by one point, when in fact they lost by 8.6 points, making their prediction wrong by almost 10%.

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Other polls have shown Biden leading Trump by several percentage points in various important states such as Texas, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Even the other Democratic candidates who aren’t quite as popular as Biden, such as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Pete Buttigieg, are vying with Trump for control of the polls in important states.

Furthermore, the president’s approval ratings are below his disapproval ratings in many key battleground states, including New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina and Indiana. His approval ratings are 12% lower than his disapproval ratings in Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, all states that he won in 2016 and which will prove essential to a victory in 2020.