President Donald Trump says polls with ‘fraudulent’ figures need to be investigated as criminal offenses.
He claimed in a Truth Social post on Monday that results are intentionally skewed to sway public opinion or influence events – like the 2020 presidential election.
But the post may have been triggered by a deluge of bad numbers from an array of polling firms showing his popularity on a host of issues in free fall.
Trump’s approval rating is slipping, especially in the midst of the rising controversy over ICE operations. And his numbers are sliding even before the highly criticized killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Minnesota over the weekend by DHS agents.
‘Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense,’ Trump insisted in his post.
He said that pollsters were ‘knowingly wrong’ but that ‘they knew what they were doing’ by publishing these allegedly intentionally incorrect poll figures.
‘Something has to be done about Fraudulent Polling,’ the president went on, and concluded: ‘I am going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!’
A New York Times/Sienna poll released last week shows Trump with 56 percent disapproval and only 40 percent approval.
President Donald Trump wants ‘knowingly wrong’ news outlets who publish ‘fraudulent polling’ to be criminally investigated and prosecuted
Trump was specifically peeved with polls that he says ‘influenced’ the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden
ICE operations are negatively impacting Trump’s approval. Pictured: Moments before the brutal and deadly DHS shooting of Alex Pretti
And a Rasmussen poll, which is usually more favorable towards Trump than other polling models, was taken January 19-25 and shows the president with 52 percent disapproval and 47 percent approval.
No recent polling has Trump with higher approval than disapproval.
Tracking since the start of his second term shows Trump average net approval dropping a significant 26 points from approximately a positive 12 percent approval earlier last year to now a negative 14 percent approval.
Additionally, a YouGov/Economist poll released January 13 in the wake of the ICE shooting of Renee Good showed that only 34 percent of Americans think that ICE operations are making America more safe and 47 percent think the mission is making the US more unsafe.
The issue is highly polarizing, with 77 percent of Republicans thinking ICE is making the US safe and only 3 percent of Democrats feeling the same.
But Trump didn’t seem specifically concerned with how DHS is impacting his approval. Instead he wants to criminally prosecute pollsters he thinks are fraudulently publishing results that show him in a bad light and those that he thinks caused him to lose the 2020 presidential election.
‘There are great Pollsters that called the Election right, but the Media does not want to use them in any way, shape, or form. Isn’t it sad what has happened to American Journalism,’ he posted to Truth Social on Monday.
The president also called out a list of news outlets he claims are conducting and publishing ‘fraudulent polling,’ including the New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN and MSNBC; as well as some of his more favorite outlets like Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.
