"Something weird going on at Fox"

When President Donald Trump’s internal polling suggested he was trailing Democrats in crucial states earlier this year, it did what any campaign would do: tried to bury the bad numbers.

When the findings leaked to the media anyway, an infuriated Trump and his aides first disputed the poll’s existence, then tried to dismiss its importance before finally firing some of the pollsters.

[...]

Trump and his team have made a habit of discounting embarrassing news as “fake.” But the internal drama on the brink of Trump’s formal reelection launch could also signal trouble ahead if staffers are skittish about being candid with a boss who has made “winning” a central part of his brand.

“All news about the president’s polling is completely false,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement. “The president’s new polling is extraordinary and his numbers have never been better.”

  AP

LOLOL.

The episode was also a sobering reminder that for all the Trump campaign’s efforts to professionalize its operation, much hasn’t changed. Despite its new fundraising prowess and growing staff working from a gleaming tower overlooking the Potomac River, the reelection campaign is likely to feature the same leaks, backbiting and high turnover as Trump’s ramshackle 2016 effort and early White House tenure.

A fish rots from the head down.

It remains unclear whether the president was briefed on any aspect of the poll before it became public, but two people familiar with the situation said he had not signed off on it beforehand and learned about its findings and price tag from the media.

You mean the fake news?

The campaign’s response to the polling flap was scattershot. Officials first denied the existence of the poll. Then ABC News reported on the numbers, which showed Trump losing to Democratic front-runner Joe Biden in several key battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida.

In response to the story, Parscale admitted the numbers were accurate but tried to discount them, insisting they were outdated and flawed because they came before the release of the summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and before Democrats made their cases.

LOL. In other words, they're WORSE.

He pointed to a new, private survey he said showed “huge swings in the president’s favor across the 17 states we have polled, based on the policies now espoused by the Democrats.” The campaign has not released those results.

No, I bet they haven't.

Trump was also dismissive.

“Those polls don’t exist,” he said in an interview with ABC News that aired Sunday night, insisting he’d spoken to another pollster who had concluded he was “winning everywhere.”

Who was that? "John Barron"?

Campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany, in an appearance Monday on “Fox and Friends,” dismissed the poll reports as “more fake news” even as she confirmed their veracity.

“Yes, those numbers were accurate, but they were from three months ago, they were pre-Mueller report, they were the worst-case scenario and the most unfavorable turnout model,” she said.

Why bother with polls? Just let him say he's winning everywhere.

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: