That Big Poll Showing Trump and Biden Are Evenly Matched? Trump Helped Pay for It.

A recent Wall Street Journal poll announced that most voters think Joe Biden is too old to be president for a second term—and a 2024 matchup between Biden and Donald Trump would be evenly split. The poll has since been covered across multiple mainstream media outlets, including MSNBC, CNN, and Fox.

There’s just one problem: The poll was conducted in part by Trump’s former campaign pollster.

The poll, which was published Monday, found that Biden and Trump are tied with 46 percent support each. But “nearly three-quarters of voters say the president is too old to run again,” the Journal article said. It has garnered widespread media attention and outrage. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough pointed out that Trump has been indicted four times and lied many, many more times, and yet he is tied with Biden simply because the latter is just three years older.

But the Journal neglects to provide information about one of the men behind the poll. Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio conducted the survey in partnership with a Democratic colleague, Michael Bocian. In a separate piece, the Journal acknowledged that Fabrizio “works for a super PAC supporting Trump’s candidacy.”

What the Journal does not mention anywhere is that Fabrizio also worked as the chief pollster on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And since the start of 2023, Trump’s super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc., has paid Fabrizio’s company more than $567,000, according to FEC filings.

Fabrizio also has extensive ties to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Manafort was convicted of tax evasion and bank fraud in 2018 (as well as of having terrible taste in jackets by the court of public opinion).

Fabrizio owned the firm that made a shady payment of $125,000 to Manafort in 2017. Fabrizio was also the lead Trump campaign pollster at the time Manafort provided raw polling data to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, via Manafort’s associate Konstantin Kilimnik. Deripaska has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018, and Kilimnik has been discovered to be a Russian spy.