Dlylan Stableford, Yahoo! News
President Trump on Friday suggested Fox News should fire its pollster after the cable news network’s latest national survey showed former Vice President Joe Biden leading him by 8 points.
“@FoxNews should fire their Fake Pollster. Never had a good Fox Poll!” Trump wrote while retweeting a screengrab of a Fox News poll from the 2016 campaign that showed him trailing Hillary Clinton by more than 10 points.
According to the latest Fox News poll released Thursday, Biden leads Trump 48 percent to 40 percent among registered voters. The same survey last month had Biden and Trump tied at 42 percent. The poll also found that more voters trust Biden (46 percent) than Trump (37 percent) to handle the coronavirus.
In a follow-up tweet, Trump wondered why his off-and-on favorite cable news network did not highlight polls that were more favorable for him, and mused about missing the network’s former president, the late Roger Ailes.
“Why doesn’t @FoxNews put up the CNBC POLL or the (believe it or not!) @CNN Poll?” Trump wrote. “Hope Roger A is looking down and watching what has happened to this once beautiful creation!”
Trump not infrequently claims to know whether deceased public figures are looking “down” from heaven, or “up” from the other place. Ailes died in 2017, a year after he resigned from the network over numerous allegations of sexual harassment.
Trump has long complained about unfavorable polls, including those from Fox News.
“My worst polls have always been from Fox,” Trump told reporters last August, after a Fox poll showed him trailing four potential Democratic opponents in the 2020 race and having a majority of the country disapproving of his job performance.
“There’s something going on at Fox,” he added, “and I tell you I’m not happy with it.”
Since 1996, Fox polls have been overseen by Dana Blanton, the network’s vice president of public opinion research. According to the Los Angeles Times, “since 2011, Blanton has used a bipartisan team to gather data for Fox News — Beacon Research President Chris Anderson, a Democrat; and Daron Shaw, a Republican, of Shaw & Co. Research.”
On Thursday, the president complained that Fox News isn’t doing enough to help him and other Republicans get reelected.
“Many will disagree, but @FoxNews is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected on November 3rd,” he tweeted from aboard Air Force One en route to Michigan.
“Sure, there are some truly GREAT people on Fox, but you also have some real ‘garbage’ littered all over the network, people like Dummy Juan Williams, Schumerite Chris Hahn, Richard Goodstein, Donna Brazile, Niel [sic] Cavuto, and many others,” Trump continued. “They repeat the worst of the Democrat speaking points, and lies. All of the good is totally nullified, and more. Net Result = BAD! CNN & MSDNC are all in for the Do Nothing Democrats! Fox WAS Great!”
The outburst targeting Fox News came just days after anchor Neil Cavuto chastised the president for announcing that he was taking the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to ward off possible infection from the coronavirus.
Cavuto alluded to studies that found the drug does not help treat or prevent COVID-19 and posed serious health risks, including death.
“If you are in a risky population here, and you are taking this as a preventative treatment to ward off the virus or, in a worst-case scenario, you are dealing with the virus, and you are in this vulnerable population, it will kill you,” Cavuto said hours after Trump revealed he was taking the medication. “I cannot stress enough: This will kill you.”
On Thursday morning, the Washington Post reported on a large-scale study that showed hydroxychloroquine really could kill people who took it.
In response to Cavuto’s segment, Trump tweeted that he was “looking for a new outlet” to watch.
David Knowles contributed reporting to this story.
(Photo composite: Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
_____
