The ongoing battle between President Donald Trump and CNN continued on Wednesday when the president’s re-election campaign demanded that the outlet retract and apologize for a recent poll they published that showed Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden by double digits.
The poll was conducted June 2-5 and released on June 8. It showed Trump behind Biden by a 14 point margin (55%-41%). The poll also gave Trump a disapproval rating of 57 percent — he has brought a 57 percent disapproval rating in that poll on a number of occasions including October and January of 2019.
Trump lawyers sent a letter to CNN arguing that the poll is”designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling,” according to a CNN report on the letter.
The attorneys added, “It’s a stunt and a phony poll to cause voter suppression, stifle momentum and enthusiasm for the President, and present a false view generally of the actual support across America for the President.”
They asked CNN to provide a “full, fair, and conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification to correct its misleading conclusions.”
Immediately after the CNN poll was published, Trump announced, “I have retained highly respected pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, to analyze [today’s] CNN Poll (and others), which I felt were FAKE based on the incredible enthusiasm we are receiving.”
I have retained highly respected pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, to analyze todays CNN Poll (and others), which I felt were FAKE based on the incredible enthusiasm we are receiving. Read analysis for yourself. This is the same thing they and others did when we defeated…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 8, 2020
McLaughlin & Associates is a Virginia-based polling firm with a “C/D” accuracy rating from the political number-junkie site FiveThirtyEight.
“To my knowledge, this is the first time in its 40 year history that CNN had been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN’s polling results,” CNN’s General Counsel David Vigilant wrote in a letter to the Trump campaign.
He added, “To the extent that we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or not respect for a free and independent media.”
Official response from CNN General Counsel to @TeamTrump‘s letter demanding CNN apologize for a poll that shows @JoeBiden leading. pic.twitter.com/pQaGPxsA0y
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) June 10, 2020
CNN’s lawyers noted McLaughlin’s less-than-stellar credentials before adding, “Your letter is legally baseless. It is yet another bad faith attempt by the campaign to threaten litigation to muzzle speech it does not want voters to read or hear. Your allegations and demands are rejected in their entirety.”