Shoot the messenger

It’s wonderful to see Donald Trump firing three of the five polling organisations he previously had working for his re-election campaign.

Even more wonderful is the reason why: he was responding to leaked internal polls which showed him behind some potential Democratic opponents and way behind some others.

Bring me the news I want to hear or fear the consequences

That’s naturally immensely gratifying in itself. We’re still a long way out, of course, but the lower Trump’s starting point in his battle for re-election, the less likely he is to close the gap, and the better that is for all of us. That’s all of us including the majority of his own supporters, incidentally: the poor and left-behind who allowed themselves to be deluded into believing that he would do something for them.

It’s also a real pleasure to see Trump responding this way. He doesn’t like the message, so he shoots the messenger. And declares:

We are winning in every single state that we’ve polled. We’re winning in Texas very big. We’re winning in Ohio very big. We’re winning in Florida very big.

The evidence is neither here nor there, what matters is what he believes.

This, as I mentioned last time, is the way Fake News works. You present things the way you want them to be, and then you believe it, because it’s what you want to swallow. Ironically, that doesn’t stop Trump – inevitably – denouncing any news he doesn’t like as fake news. He made that clear in a tweet:

The Fake (Corrupt) News Media said they had a leak into polling done by my campaign which, by the way and despite the phony and never ending Witch Hunt, are the best numbers WE have ever had. They reported Fake numbers that they made up & don’t even exist. WE WILL WIN AGAIN!

The numbers his own pollsters gave him had to be wrong, because they didn’t support his conviction, true because he wishes it so, that HE WILL WIN AGAIN!

Well, he might win again. But for the moment at least, the omens are against him. Those who prefer evidence over belief have to wonder whether his victory is quite as assured as he claims.

Especially as the evidence came from people he had himself employed to reinforce his wishful thinking. He must think it extraordinary that they reached the opposite conclusion. That’s nothing short of treason, a word he’s keen to throw at others while trying to duck the accusation himself. And at the very least, it represents a failure to deliver what was required.

It’s only a wonder he kept two of the organisations on and fired only three of them.