President Donald Trump wants “fraudulent polling” to be treated as a crime—and he’s going after Fox News to prove it.
The 79-year-old president went on a Truth Social tear Monday, lashing out at multiple news organizations over their 2020 election polling. “Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense,” Trump declared, claiming that media coverage “showed Polls that were knowingly wrong.”
THE DETAILS: Trump’s rant included a genuinely confusing assertion about the 2020 election: “I won in a Landslide, including winning the Popular Vote, all 7 of the 7 Swing States, the Electoral College was a route, and 2,750 Counties to 525.”
Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden by more than seven million votes. Biden won six of the seven swing states that year. So either Trump is still lying about 2020, or he confused it with 2024, where he actually did win the swing states and popular vote. (He also almost certainly meant “rout” instead of “route.” Classic.)
The president named and shamed his usual targets—the “Failing New York Times,” ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and “the now defunct MSDNC”—but then turned his fire on friendlier territory. “Even the Polls of FoxNews and The Wall Street Journal have been, over the years, terrible!” Trump wrote, vowing to do “everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!”
OF COURSE: This outburst didn’t come out of nowhere. Last week, Trump announced he’s expanding his defamation lawsuit against the New York Times to include their polling operation. “The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit,” he wrote.
The latest New York Times/Siena poll found Trump’s approval rating at 40 percent—down three points from the previous survey. Less than a third of respondents said the country was better off than a year ago, and 51 percent said Trump’s policies had made life less affordable.
WHY IT MATTERS: A sitting president threatening to criminalize polling he doesn’t like isn’t just petty grievance—it’s an authoritarian impulse dressed up as media criticism. Polling is a fundamental tool of democratic accountability. When the numbers look bad, Trump doesn’t change course; he tries to silence the messenger.
The New York Times defended its polling, noting that whether results favor the president has no bearing on methodology. But when the leader of the country frames legitimate public opinion research as a criminal “scam,” that’s not just bizarre—it’s a warning sign about how this administration views dissent, data, and reality itself.