June 11, 2019

Trump’s Own Polling Data Shows He’s in Deep Trouble. Here’s How He Reportedly Tried to Bury It.

That’s one way to deal with “devastating” numbers.

Ron Sachs/ZUMA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

President Donald Trump has long relied on parroting Fox News and cherry-picked, often misleading data in order to portray confidence ahead of the 2020 election. The president has also, without evidence, repeatedly claimed that if it had not been for the special counsel’s Russia investigation, his favorability ratings would be much higher.

But Trump’s fraught relationship with the truth about his popularity has now reportedly moved onto bizarre efforts to bury the results of his own campaign’s polling data. 

According to the New York Times, Trump was recently presented with the results of a 17-state internal poll that showed Biden leading in several key states. Afterward, the president reportedly ordered his staff to publicly deny that such data existed. When the internal numbers eventually leaked, the Times says he went one step further, ordering his staff to push friendlier data that ignored the “devastating” results presented by his own pollster. 

Campaign officials have since denied that they were told to lie about the data, which mirrors other recent polls showing Trump trailing Biden.

The alleged scrambled attempt to conceal his own polling data comes as Trump and Biden are both set to appear in Iowa on Tuesday, the first time the two men will campaign in the same state on the same day this election season. Biden is expected to label Trump as an “existential threat” to the country.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate