Donald Trump doubled down on his smear campaign against Fox News Tuesday when he accused it of reporting fake polls — then shared a lot of screenshots of tweets as apparent proof.
Trump took to Truth Social to rage against the conservative cable network, and specifically anchor John Roberts, for reporting polls not to his liking on his campaign against President Joe Biden.
"FoxNews will put up Fake Confidential Democrat Polls that were 'leaked' to them," Trump wrote, "but not Rasmussen or any of the REAL polling groups that have me way ahead. What’s up with FOX? I do better with CNN!!!"
Conservative strategist Jake Timmer noted the polling source Rasmussen can be less than reliable.
"If you're looking to divine usable voter sentiment data, you're better off boiling chicken feet in blood and performing voodoo incantations than relying on a Rasmussen poll," he wrote.
Trump claimed "real" polls showed him defeating Biden in November by a landslide.
"FoxNews will never take great polls, from reputable pollsters, where I’m beating Crooked Joe, the worst President in history, by a lot, but will take FAKE confidential Democrat polls, that they leaked to Fox, and go up big with them," Trump wrote. "John Roberts, a real heavyweight, was the 'anchor.' I’ll be releasing REAL POLLS shortly!"
Trump appears to have been triggered by Fox News reporting a poll that found Vice President Kamala Harris could beat him.
Trump then shared five screenshots of tweets.
ALSO READ: Give me the stuttering old man over the racist, sexist, lying fascist
Four come from an account called @IAPolls2022 sharing poll data from the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, D.C. market researcher Cygnal and the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute.
Interestingly, the Economist tweet does not link to the data source but to Polymarket, a crypto-currency based prediction platform were users can bet on world events. The account often links to the gambling site in tweets as well as in its profile. -- Would you double check me on these links? I'm not amazingly familiar with poll twitter and I want to be sure I'm not being an idiot.
The fifth screenshot shows a tweet from @PPollingNumbers, a Twitter account that describes itself as nonpartisan and shares polling data from a variety of reliable sources such as the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University.
It does not have a website Raw Story could find nor does it provide information about who runs the account.
The tweet was posted on July 2 and shows a "leaked" and "internal" report from the progressive nonprofit OpenLabs that found Trump winning by a reported landslide based on numbers polled directly after Biden's disastrous debate.
A report on that leaked poll from the Independent noted "that this is one poll conducted just after the debate and it will take a few weeks to determine how the race shapes up and what the final impact of Biden’s dismal debate will be."
