Trump aide blames bad poll on Rupert Murdoch

A top campaign aide to Donald Trump is downplaying a new national poll showing the presidential contender trailing rival Ted Cruz by linking the poll to conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch. 

{mosads}”10 recent polls. Which one is affiliated with a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch?” Trump adviser and social media director Dan Scavino tweeted Thursday morning with a picture showing the results of 10 recent polls. 

The new data from NBC News/The Wall Street Journal is the only outlier in the graphic, showing Cruz edging out Trump by 2 percentage points. In the rest of the polls listed, Trump holds a double-digit lead over the Texas senator. Murdoch bought the Journal in 2007. 

The NBC/Journal survey broke a streak of 31 consecutive national polls with Trump in the lead, according to an average by RealClearPolitics. But there’s no evidence yet that the trend will continue, as a new CBS News poll released Thursday found Trump up by 17 points. 

The billionaire businessman himself has cast doubt on the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll and called it a “total joke” in a Thursday morning tweet. 

“I think somebody at the Wall Street Journal doesn’t like me,” he said during a MSNBC town hall Wednesday event in Charleston, S.C.

The tweet from Scavino was first flagged by the liberal Right Wing Watch, which noted that Trump has regularly accused Murdoch-owned Fox News of bias. Trump skipped a January Fox News debate in retribution for a harsh statement from the network in response to his calls to remove Megyn Kelly as debate moderator.