Trump 'asked aides to deny polls showing him losing to Biden', report says
Clark Mindock
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Trump filmed angrily telling his coughing chief of staff to get out of the Oval Office: 'You just can't cough'
US President Donald Trump was filmed ordering his chief of staff out of the Oval Office for coughing during a tense interview.“He’s coughing in the middle of my answer, I don’t like that,” he is filmed snapping at his chief of staff Mick Mulvaney after being asked when he will release his financial records. “If you’re going to cough, please leave the room.“You just can’t, you just can’t cough,” Mr Trump added, shaking his head emphatically. The episode came during a TV interview broadcast on Sunday, during which ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Mr Trump probing questions about his financial history, the Mueller investigation, Barack Obama and decreasing poll numbers. It was not clear whether Mr Mulvaney actually left the room.During the interview, Mr Trump repeatedly made false claims about special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, which found evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 US election and suspicious links between Mr Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. Right before the coughing episode, the interviewer asked Mr Trump whether he would release his tax returns, something Democratic opponents have been pressing for since before he became president.Having upbraided his chief of staff for his coughing fit, Mr Trump resumed the interview, saying: "So at some point, I look forward to, frankly, I’d like to have people see my financial statement. Because it’s phenomenal."Mr Stephanopoulos interrupts to say: "It's up to you."The president replies: "No, it’s not up to me, it’s up to lawyers, it’s up to everything else. But they’re asking for things that should never be asking for, that they’ve never asked another president for. They wanna go through every deal that I’ve ever done. They’ve, what they’re doing is a disgrace.”The interviewer says: "But other presidents have turned over their tax returns.”Ignoring the interruption, Mr Trump says: “They’re trying to do: step, step, step. They wanna keep it going as long as possible to try and demean and hurt as much as possible, so they can possibly win the presidential election.”
Donald Trump has told his aides to publicly deny his internal polling that shows him behind Joe Biden in key 2020 states, according to reports.
The reported instructions followed after a poll of 17 states was conducted for Mr Trump by pollster Tony Fabrizio, and then leaked. The polls showed Mr Trump behind Mr Biden in some important states for his re-election prospects, but it is not clear which states were identified in the internal polling.
After the top-line polling was leaked showing that potential vulnerability, the president instructed his aides to simply say that there is other data that shows him doing well, according to a report from The New York Times.
In spite of Mr Trump’s efforts to bury his own leaked internal polling, public surveys of voters in several states shows that he could face an uphill battle to be re-elected against Mr Biden should he win his party’s nomination.
Just last week, for instance, a Quinnipiac University poll found Mr Biden leading the president by 4 points in Texas — a potentially shocking state for a Republican to lose, given the state hasn’t broken for a Democrat since 1976.
In another poll, Mr Biden and other 2020 Democratic hopefuls also lead Mr Trump in Michigan, a state the president narrowly won in 2016.
Mr Trump saw upset victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in 2016, with all three breaking for the Republican for the first time since the 1980s.
His narrow wins in those states would likely need to be replicated if he hopes to win in 2020, and losing a state like Texas would only further complicate the math for the president’s hopes to reclaim an electoral college victory.