June 16 at 4:04 PM
Trump campaign cutting ties with three members of polling team after grim numbers leaked
The news comes days after a New York Times report on a 17-state internal poll conducted by Fabrizio that showed Trump trailing Biden by double digits in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Michigan, where Trump narrowly edged out Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. The poll also found Trump trailing Biden in several other states that were key to the president’s win — Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia — while holding a narrow edge in strongly Republican Texas.
Publicly, Trump initially declared that the results had been fabricated by the media and “don’t even exist.” But Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale later confirmed that the results were indeed from a poll conducted by the campaign in March, and on Friday, ABC News published the poll results.
Privately, the president was livid that the numbers leaked out, according to White House and campaign officials.
“He is madder that the numbers are out than that the numbers exist,” said one senior administration official