“We are leading in North Carolina. We are leading in Pennsylvania. We are leading in Arizona,” Trump said, without referring to specific polls. “We are leading very well in Florida. I think our poll numbers are very good. We are leading substantially in Georgia.”
Trump dismissed polls that make him lose in these states as bogus, citing the 2016 election where many polls showed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading in competitive states that she ultimately lost.
“Four years ago, I was losing everywhere. I had poll numbers where no state was going to win, and I ended up winning every single one of them. You know the change states, I wasn’t going to win any of the states and I won them all. “Trump said.
Facts First: Most polls show that Trump continues in almost every changing state, particularly the ones he named. It is also not true that polls predicted that it would not win any decisive status in 2016.
While none of the top 2016 polls showed Trump leading at any time in Michigan or Wisconsin, he was in the lead in polls for several other battlefield states that he ultimately won in the 2016 election. A CNN poll of August 2016 showed that Trump was ahead in Arizona, and the July 2016 Quinnipiac polls found Trump leading in Florida and Pennsylvania, though subsequent polls closest to the election had the race tied in those two states.
The Trump campaign routinely tries to discredit public polls, while acknowledging that those polls show them behind.
In a recent conference call with reporters, new campaign manager Bill Stepien questioned the validity of public polls on several fronts, including what he claimed was under-sampling of Republicans and flawed methodology. He also complained that the polling companies were not transparent enough with their work.
“All of these problems make it very difficult to take these surveys and others like them, you know, too seriously,” Stepien said. “I come from a school of thought. There is a reason why in elementary school we were asked to demonstrate our math, not just the children’s responses. We want to see how these pollsters came to their conclusions.”
At Monday’s briefing, Trump also repeated some classic false claims that don’t refer to the election.
Veterans Choice
Trump falsely claimed he “had the VA option.”
This is one of the President’s most repeated false claims. Since CNN began counting on July 8, 2019, Trump has repeated this claim more than 60 times.
Space force
Trying to promote the achievements of his administration, Trump claimed that the Space Force was the first new branch of the military in 75 years.
“We create a force,” said Trump. “That has not happened in 75 years.”
Facts First: “75 years” is a slight exaggeration. The Air Force became a separate branch of the military in September 1947, some 72 years before the Space Force was founded in 2019.
China’s worst year
Trump also compared the United States economy to that of China. “By the way, China was having the worst year they had in 67 years,” Trump said. In comparison, he stated, “We were having the best year we’ve ever had.”
The United States also did not have its best economic year because of the metric by which China had its worst year in more than 20 years. The growth of the second quarter of the USA for 2019 was 2%, lower than in the same quarter of 2018 and 2017.
CNN’s Ryan Nobles contributed to this report.
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