President Trump’s campaign communications director dismissed a New York Times poll on Wednesday showing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden 14 percentage points ahead of the president.
Hill.TV’s Krystal Ball asked Tim Murtaugh what he made of the Times poll and other surveys showing Trump lagging behind the former vice president.
“Not much,” he responded. “I think we have to remember history here and what happened in 2016.”
Ball pressed Murtaugh, saying 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton “never really” reached 50 percent in the last cycle’s surveys.
He responded that Trump was only ahead in 16 of 261 polls at this point in the 2016 campaign. He also pointed that the Times poll surveyed registered voters, not likely voters, and he said these polls have a “severe underreporting of Trump voters.”
“We know that our voters don’t talk to pollsters,” he said, pointing out that they have “reason to believe that the people on the other end” of the poll “know who you are.”
“The media, The New York Times, who is of course no friend to our side, and CNN and the like, use these polls to set the narrative, and they want to write the story to discourage Trump voters,” he added.
The Times poll found Biden at 50 percent and Trump at 36 percent, when surveying 1,337 registered voters.
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