The Trump campaign press secretary confronted a Fox News host on-air Friday about the network's polls showing Trump trailing in the 2020 presidential race, and things got testy.
The video: The exchange started when "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade brought up new Fox News surveys that found Democrat Joe Biden beating Trump in three swing states.
- "You touched on some polls. Most of those are fake; they oversample Democrats," said Hogan Gidley, who is the White House deputy press secretary in addition to his role on the campaign.
- He went on to note Trump's "enthusiasm gap" advantage.
- Kilmeade didn't take kindly to his guest's disparagement of Fox News pollsters, saying his colleagues "do a really good job" whether or not their work proves to be predictive.
- After Gidley insisted accuracy is what really matter, Kilmeade was more direct: "I’m not saying they’re Nostradamus. But I am just saying they’re math, and they’re professionals. So don’t call the Fox News pollsters fake,"
- “Well the methodology is flawed at the very least, how’s that?” Gidley said.
On Fox & Friends, Trump campaign press secretary Hogan Gidley calls Fox News polling "fake," and Brian Kilmeade tells him "don't call the Fox News pollsters fake." pic.twitter.com/kV6xS1keEK
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) July 24, 2020
Not just Fox News: As Kilmeade told Gidley earlier in the segment, almost all polls have seen Trump lagging behind Biden nationally, and other battleground surveys have been similarly worrisome for the president.
Trump and his team, while publicly defiant, have privately accepted that he’s losing, according to reports.
- Last week, Trump announced he was replacing his longtime campaign manager, winning cheers from many supporters.
Still, Republicans and Democrats alike have looked back on Trump's upset victory in 2016 as a check on hubristic predictions.
- Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, told Politico earlier this month that she fearfully thinks the polls are again "inaccurate."
- The experts “screwed up in 2016,” she said, and, “I believe that same thing is happening right now.”
- Helmut Norpoth, a professor of political science at Stony Brook University, whose model has correctly predicted 25 of the 27 past elections, gave Trump a 91 percent chance of winning a second term.
- “My forecast is unconditional and final,” he told We'll Do It Live. “The polls don’t faze me.”
