Following his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump claimed "polls" showed he "won" the debate—though the polls he chose to cite only underscore how wrong he is.
Instead of citing actual polls from reputable organizations, Trump pointed to random polls from users on X, formerly Twitter, the social media platform owned by his ally, billionaire Elon Musk.
Earlier, Trump said the following while talking questions from reporters in the debate spin room following the event:
"The polls are indicating that we have 90%, 60%, 72%, 71%, 89%."
He did not respond to one reporter who questioned his sources, only saying:
"Beyond the polls, I felt very good. I had a good time doing it."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
In a post on Truth Social, he criticized Harris, and shared screenshots of some of the so-called "polls" he was using to confirm his unearned confidence in his performance:
"Comrade Kamala Harris is going around wanting another Debate because she lost so badly - Just look at the Polls! It’s true with prizefighters, when they lose a fight, they immediately want another. MAGA2024."
The big problem: The polls he cited, including one from C-SPAN, were simply unscientific surveys of X users, a platform that leans heavily conservative now that Musk has taken it over.
@WallStreetSilv
@DailyCaller/X
@cspan/X
Perhaps most egregiously, Trump cited a snap poll from Newsmax, the far-right network that regularly promoted his election fraud conspiracies and announced he had "won" the debate by a staggering 93 percent.
Newsmax
However, a scientifically-conducted CNN flash poll showed that a majority—63%—named Harris as the winner of the debate.
CNN
And a poll from the Trafalgar Group, an opinion polling and survey company with a conservative bent that correctly predicted the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, shows that 55% of voters named Harris the winner of the debate.
Trump was widely mocked.
NPR reported that Trump "made the unusual move for a presidential candidate to go into the spin room after the debate and talk to reporters," which is "not something that’s normally done when someone has a good debate" and is "usually reserved for low-polling primary candidates, who felt they didn’t get enough time or attention during the debate."
The New York Times observed that Harris "dominated the proceedings from nearly the start" and "laid bait," most notably "with her needling Mr. Trump that his bored supporters had been leaving his rallies." By contrast, Trump spent minutes defending his rally attendance and repeated conspiracy theories about migrants eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio.
The Harris campaign said it wants another debate ahead of November's election though it is unclear if this will happen given Trump's prior waffling, particularly his attempt to move the event to Fox News, known for its more favorable and fawning coverage of him.
@jaketapoer/Bluesky
@BillAckman/Twitter