Devastating Fox Poll Should Be “Alarming” to Trump

Donald Trump’s polling in Sun Belt states should have the former president shaking in his boots, according to one political analyst.

Fox News released polling Wednesday from Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina, which found that Kamala Harris had significantly tightened the gap across the key states. Harris is now leading Trump by one point in Arizona, and two points in Georgia and Nevada. Trump has maintained a one-point lead in North Carolina, where the race is now considered to be a toss-up.

The polling indicates that Harris has expanded the Democratic voting map since entering the race, putting the Sun Belt states back in play for potential Democratic victories. President Joe Biden previously trailed Trump in each of these states.

During an appearance on CNN Wednesday night, political analyst Astead Herndon said that the Trump team ought to be scared by these numbers.

“This should be an alarming fact for the Trump campaign, and I think the trend line has been so consistent, if they are not alarmed there’s probably something wrong there,” Herndon said.

“Because Donald Trump has campaigned the last month—has been flailing, has not found a consistent attack against Harris, has not found a way to break through a news cycle, and has spent his time bringing [in] RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, people who don’t expand his tent to the voters he’s bleeding by this moment,” Herndon said, noting that Trump had failed to grow his vote share, in comparison to Harris.

Herndon noted that the poll results showed the impact of the massive small dollar donations Harris has received since joining the race, which allow her to defend her blue territories while also expanding into regions such as the Sun Belt states. With Biden as the candidate, that region might’ve been a lost cause.

“It’s Donald Trump now that is under both the political and financial pressure—again, most of which is of his own making—to be able not to have the ground game that he should at this point,” Herndon said.

But if Team Trump is panicking, they’re dealing with it their usual way: denial.

The Trump campaign promptly issued their own corrections for the Fox News polls, claiming the news organization has an “awful track record” when it comes to taking accurate polls.

“It’s that time of year again: Fox is releasing atrocious polling,” the statement said.

The campaign published their own “unskewed” results, which had been adjusted based on the differences between Fox’s projected margins in those states in 2020, and their final margins after Election Day. According to the Trump campaign’s math, Trump is miraculously ahead in Arizona, Nevada, and North Carolina.

The Trump campaign has repeatedly disseminated “unskewed” polls adjusted based on the difference between election results and recalled votes of respondents, or how they claim to have voted four years ago—a metric that is widely considered to be unreliable.

Earlier this month, the Trump campaign attempted to do the same thing to warp New York Times/Siena polling from the Sun Belt states that found Harris was leading Trump among likely voters in Arizona, 50 percent to 45 percent. The poll also found that Harris had passed Trump in North Carolina, leading him 49 percent to 47 percent, and that she had significantly narrowed the former president’s lead in Georgia and Nevada.

With Harris’s newfound edge, it seems that Trump should spend less time cooking the books, and more time getting his ground game together.

Ohio Senator J.D. Vance doesn’t seem to know what the other half of his ticket is up to.

Speaking before a crowd in the battleground state of Wisconsin for a fourth time Wednesday night, the Republican vice presidential pick attempted, once again, to brush off Donald Trump’s Arlington National Cemetery debacle. According to Vance, Trump was wrongly booted from the military burial ground, since it wasn’t as if he was filming a “TV commercial at a gravesite.”

Except that’s exactly what Trump was doing.

“You’re acting like Donald Trump filmed a TV commercial at a gravesite,” Vance said to “the media.” “He was there providing emotional support to a lot of brave Americans who lost loved ones they never should have lost, and there happened to be a camera there, and someone gave them permission to have that camera there.”

Trump utilized the footage for a campaign video where he can be seen laying flowers down at a grave and taking photos with people while giving a thumbs-up to the camera.

Trump was caught in the act on Tuesday while filming the stunt in Section 60 of the cemetery, where recent military casualties are buried. Campaign staffers reportedly launched into a verbal and physical fight with cemetery officials, who had asked the campaign to stop videotaping. Federal law prohibits politically related activities in the cemetery, including taking photos and videos in support of a political campaign. And just because the families there gave permission doesn’t change that.

The Arlington Cemetery official that confronted the campaign filed a report over the felonious behavior but declined to press charges, reportedly fearing possible retaliation from Trump’s rabid supporters, according to The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman.

Now that Kamala Harris has agreed to sit down for her first interview since President Biden dropped out of the race in July, Republicans are suddenly claiming she’s not doing it right.

Harris is sitting down for a joint interview with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, that will air at 9 p.m. Thursday on CNN. Republicans are trying to use the joint interview to claim that Harris is running scared and can’t talk to the press on her own.

“Her handlers don’t even trust her to survive a softball CNN interview, so Coach Walz is going to chaperone,” said Jesse Watters on Fox News.

“They know Kamala Harris can’t get through an interview all by herself,” Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders similarly told Fox & Friends on Wednesday. “It’s clear that her own team and her own party thinks she needs a babysitter.”

“Tim is there to help prop her up and if it gets awkward or she starts giggling or looking … crazy, then he’s gonna interrupt and take over. And then they’re gonna go back and stop the tape and retape that question to make sure she looks fantastic,” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, best known for murdering her puppy, parroted on Newsmax.

There’s just one very giant problem with their argument: Joint interviews are hardly out of the ordinary. In fact, it’s customary for the presidential and vice presidential nominees to be interviewed together immediately following the convention. Even Trump did it himself.

Though it is notable that Harris has not yet taken an interview, saying Walz is “chaperoning” her or “babysitting” her is weird and misogynistic. After watching Harris at the Democratic National Convention, claiming that she is incapable of sitting down for an interview without a man by her side doesn’t make sense. The line of attack seems like a holdover from Republicans’ attacks on Joe Biden. But on Harris, it just doesn’t play.

In his new book, Donald Trump threatens billionaire and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with prison.

Save America, set to be published next week, includes a photograph of Zuckerberg and Trump at the White House. Underneath the photo, Trump wrote that Zuckerberg “would come to the Oval Office to see me” and “bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT.”

Trump went on to pin some of his election conspiracies on Zuckerberg, and gave him a serious warning.

“He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me. We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election,” Trump (or perhaps his ghostwriter) wrote.

It’s not the first time Trump has threatened the Meta mogul with prison. In July, he called out “ZUCKERBUCKS,” saying a Trump administration would “pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time.”

Zuckerburg responded by sucking up to Trump, calling him “badass” for raising his fist following the assassination attempt against him at a Pennsylvania rally. And earlier this week, Zuckerburg wrote to Congress expressing regrets over “demoting” ​​the 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, waiting for fact-checkers to review it, drawing a gleeful response from Trump on Truth Social.

“Zuckerberg admits that the White House pushed to SUPPRESS HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY (& much more!). IN OTHER WORDS, THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION WAS RIGGED,” Trump posted on Tuesday.

Needless to say, imprisoning the owner of a social media platform because he’s not doing what you want is a clear First Amendment violation. Trump still angrily insists that the 2020 election was rigged against him, claiming that massive voter fraud coupled with collaboration between the news media and social media fixed the results. And he won’t commit to accepting a 2024 election outcome in which he loses, as his cronies make moves to sabotage November’s election in Republicans’ favor, taking over key election posts in battleground states. Democrats will have to be vigilant as Election Day nears, perhaps looking at Georgia as an example, where even leading Republicans are looking to ensure a fair process.

J.D. Vance failed desperately Wednesday to spin a story about two of Donald Trump’s staffers allegedly pushing an employee at Arlington National Cemetery—and is being absolutely roasted for it.

During his rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, the former U.S. Marine tried to downplay allegations that members of Trump’s team had verbally and physically assaulted a cemetery staff member on Monday.

After a wreath-laying ceremony for those killed three years ago at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan (Vance mistakenly called it Abbey Road), Trump’s team reportedly wanted to take pictures in Section 60, where recent U.S. casualties are laid to rest. Photography is strictly prohibited in that area. When they were met with resistance, campaign staff pushed their way in, according to NPR.

The incident has sparked outrage, but Vance had a different group to blame for the firestorm: the press.

“Well, I-I think first of all, the altercation at Arlington Cemetery is the media creating a story where I really don’t think there is one,” Vance said, claiming that there was “verifiable evidence” that the campaign was permitted to have a photographer with them.

Vance insisted it was all OK because Trump had been invited by the family of a veteran, notably leaving out the part where his team may have potentially violated federal law by bringing a photographer. Video footage from Trump’s time in Section 60 was published to his TikTok Tuesday, overlaid with thoughtful music and audio of Trump blatantly lying about the number of U.S. casualties during his term.

Vance’s move to blame the press is hardly surprising considering he can’t stop denigrating them at practically every single appearance—the Ohio senator openly grinned while a CNN reporter was booed at his rally Wednesday.

It is, however, a notable shift from the Trump team’s other egregious excuse. Trump’s communication director Steven Cheung had claimed that the incident was the fault of the ANC staff member who was “clearly suffering from a mental health episode,” and denied there was an altercation “as described.”

Later on stage, Vance brought the incident up yet again, in service of one of his deflated one-liners.

“Now, yeah, I mean i-it-it is amazing to me, that you have apparently somebody at Arlington Cemetery, some staff member, had a little disagreement with somebody, and they have turned—the media has turned this into a national news story,” Vance said.

“You know what I think our veterans care a lot more about? That Kamala Harris’s V.P. nominee lied about his military service,” Vance quipped, trotting out his same tired “stolen valor” attack against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Online, Vance was slammed for his comments, which seemed to incidentally confirm that an “altercation” had in fact taken place, while laughably attempting to downplay it at the same time.