President Donald Trump on Tuesday night touted a Newsmax survey that found 98.9% of respondents don’t think he should concede the election to Democrat Joe Biden.
The poll: Trump tweeted the results of the poll of nearly 193,000 Newsmax viewers, saying, “For the good of our Country we must prevail!”
Newsmax TV host Greg Kelly broadcast the viewer survey on his show earlier in the evening, saying he agreed with the respondents and Trump could still win the 2020 election.
- Kelly also continued to back Trump’s foundering efforts to overturn Biden’s unofficial election victory.
- “We’ve been through this before,” Kelly said, recalling the 2016 election.
Professional polls have shown a majority of Republicans think Biden only appears to have won because the vote was “rigged.”
- A recent Harvard CAPS-Harris survey found 70% of Republicans don’t want Trump to concede, compared to 42% of all registered voters.
Trump in a pair of tweets on Monday authorized the start of a formal transition process to a Biden administration but declared he would “never concede.”
- On Tuesday, Trump continued to tweet and retweet wild allegations about an international and bipartisan conspiracy to steal the election from him via mail-in voting fraud and electronic hacking.
“FOX IS DEAD TO ME!”: Since election night, Trump and his allies have promoted Newsmax as an alternative to Fox News, which they accuse of turning against the president.
- “TIME TO MAKE OAN & NEWSMAX RICH. FOX IS DEAD TO ME!” actor Randy Quaid said in one tweet shared by Trump on Tuesday.
- At the same time, Newsmax’s rating have surged while Fox News’s have declined.
However, Newsmax faced a wave of backlash from Trump supporters on Tuesday after the cable news upstart recognized three state’s certified election results for Biden.
In a New Yorker article published earlier in the day, Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, a Trump confidante, said the president should concede once his loss was certified.
- “Hillary Clinton said in August that under no circumstances should Joe Biden concede,” Ruddy recalled, adding: “And I do think that Donald Trump should concede when the certifications come in.”
