June 19, 2020: President Trump Really Hates CNN Polls

 

6/19/20: We had some much-needed good news Thursday. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court said that the Trump administration could not overturn the DACA program. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, called the reasons given for a proposed end to the program “arbitrary and capricious.” 

(Arbitrary and Capricious would be excellent names for twin strippers.)

 

For now, 800,000 young people, brought to the United States illegally, when they were children, having grown up here, cannot be tossed into the ocean, just so Trump can spite President Obama. 

That’s it for good news.

 

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WE DO HAVE one “good news, bad news” story. A recent CNN poll showed Trump trailing Joe Biden, 55%-41%, if the election were held today. 

That’s the good news part.

 

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Trump has every intention of muzzling the free press if he can get away with it, and might in a second term.

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Here’s the bad. Team Trump, always creeping in the direction of authoritarianism, sent CNN a cease and desist order. They demanded that CNN stop doing polls, unless they could show Trump leading 100%-0%. 

I might have made up that figure. But Team Trump had to make up a legal basis for their order. It was signed by Jenna Ellis and Michael Glassner, top officials with the Trump campaign. Neither appears to have heard of the First Amendment. “It’s a stunt and a phony poll to cause voter suppression,” they complained to CNN, “stifle momentum and enthusiasm for the President, and present a false view generally of the actual support across America for the President.” 

The Trump campaign insisted CNN should publish a “full, fair, and conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification to correct its misleading conclusions.” I think Ellis and Glassner might have been happy to see CNN go with a series of stories headlined something like: 

TRUMP, LOVED BY ALL. 

NOVEMBER ELECTION CANCELED. 

CNN POLSTERS EXECUTED. PUTIN THRILLED. 

(Go back to 6/18/20, for Trump’s thoughts on executing journalists.)

 

Say what you like about CNN’s coverage, whether you believe it’s biased or not. If you don’t consider threats to the free press a danger, you should read more about Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Chairman Mao. 

Fortunately, the First Amendment still applies. CNN executive vice president and general counsel, David Vigilante, informs the Trump campaign that its “allegations and demands are rejected in their entirety.” 

“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,” Vigilante wrote in his response. “To the extent 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 no respect for a free and independent media.”

 

So, the bad news? 

Trump has every intention of muzzling the free press if he can get away with it, and might in a second term. 

Then, more good news. The CNN poll isn’t an outlier. If the election were held today, Trump’s orange ass would be smoked. Here are the most recent polls. It’s still too early to say the Trump family should schedule a moving van. We do seem to be headed in the right direction.

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“In many ways, it makes us look bad.” 

IT’S JUST MORE BAD NEWS after that, including the fact that our president is an imbecile. 

With the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus rising once more, Trump told the Wall Street Journal he thinks testing for the virus is “overrated,” even though he boasted about having “created the greatest testing machine in history.” “I created,” he said. Not: “American scientists created.” 

If we stopped testing, though, he added, we’d be better off. “In many ways, it makes us look bad.” 

If we kept testing, and the number of confirmed cases in this country (2.2 million as of Friday evening) kept rising, and the number of dead (more than 119,000) kept rising, yes. According to the president, it would make “us look bad.” In reality, Trump is the man who looks bad. Not “us.” Because Trump said we were going to zero cases back in February. Not “us.” 

We didn’t say that.

 

Trump also suggested in his Journal interview that he believed some Americans wore masks, “not as a preventative measure but as a way to signal disapproval of him.” I think he might be onto something there: