Watch Brian Kilmeade’s Reaction When Trump Campaign Staffer Says Fox News’ Polls Are ‘Fake’

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The Trump campaign press secretary confronted a Fox News host on-air Friday about the network’s polls showing Trump trailing in the 2020 presidential race, and things got testy.

The video: The exchange started when “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade brought up new Fox News surveys that found Democrat Joe Biden beating Trump in three swing states.

  • “You touched on some polls. Most of those are fake; they oversample Democrats,” said Hogan Gidley, who is the White House deputy press secretary in addition to his role on the reelection campaign.
  • He went on to note Trump’s “enthusiasm gap” advantage.
  • Kilmeade, who has generally been supportive of Trump, didn’t take kindly to his guest’s disparagement of Fox News pollsters, saying his colleagues “do a really good job” whether or not their work proves to be predictive.
  • After Gidley insisted accuracy is what really matters, Kilmeade was more direct: “I’m not saying they’re Nostradamus. But I am just saying they’re math, and they’re professionals. So don’t call the Fox News pollsters fake.”
  • “Well the methodology is flawed at the very least, how’s that?” Gidley said.

Kilmeade and Gidley also sparred on the show earlier this month over whether the Trump campaign could credibly claim Americans “are better” of than they were in 2016 given the economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic.

Not just Fox News: As Kilmeade noted earlier in Friday’s segment, almost all national polls have shown Trump lagging behind Biden, and other battleground surveys have been similarly worrisome for the president.

Trump and his team, while publicly defiant, have privately accepted that he’s losing, according to reports.

  • Last week, Trump announced he was replacing his longtime campaign manager, winning cheers from many supporters.
Source: Twitter

Still, Republicans and Democrats alike have looked back on Trump’s upset victory in 2016 as a check on hubristic predictions.

  • Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, told Politico earlier this month that she fearfully thinks the polls are again “inaccurate.”
  • The experts “screwed up in 2016,” she said, and, “I believe that same thing is happening right now.”
  • Helmut Norpoth, a professor of political science at Stony Brook University, whose model has presaged 25 of the 27 past elections, gave Trump a 91 percent chance of winning a second term.
  • “My forecast is unconditional and final,” he told We’ll Do It Live. “The polls don’t faze me.”
By We'll Do It Live