Trump calls polls fake as WH infighting and Ohio ad row intensify

CNN’s YouTube channel is carrying a package titled “Trump’s ‘fake polls’, WH infighting, Ohio ad controversy & more | Erin Burnett OutFront this week.” The channel’s own description puts President Donald Trump’s claim that recent surveys are “fake” at the front of a week of political coverage that also flags White House friction and an Ohio advertising fight. Posted on Oct. 24, the clip is by the platform’s counts this week. This reporter has not watched the footage; every description of what it contains is drawn from CNN’s posted summary or from named outlets that covered the same events.

According to the channel description, the opening block follows Trump on the trail in Kansas for Republican Sen. Roger Marshall and records him telling a reporter the polls are fake. “Look, the polls are fake,” Trump said while stumping there, per that account. He added: “It’s a close race. It shouldn’t be. And as you know, I won by a tremendous amount, like 25, 30 points.” A recent New York Times poll had Marshall tied 45-45 with Democratic challenger Adam Hamilton, a megachurch pastor. Marshall carried his last race by more than 11 percentage points. Democrats are hoping for their first Kansas Senate win since 1932.

Fundraising numbers underline the squeeze. Marshall raised $800,000 between July and September. Hamilton raised $9 million in the same window. Hamilton told Jake Tapper he welcomed the presidential visit. “I took it as a big compliment. I took it as a statement that the Republican party felt they needed to send the most powerful man in the country to,” Hamilton said, according to the CNN material. The same stretch of coverage notes Trump has also commented on candidates’ looks on the trail, including the line “I actually think Mike Collins is a good-looking man.”

Separate reporting by The Independent on an interview with The Washington Examiner’s Byron York, published Saturday, shows Trump rejecting national job-approval figures the same way. Asked about a RealClearPolitics average of 38.8 percent approve and 60.4 percent disapprove, Trump answered, “It’s fake.” He went on: “The job approval, they said it’s 37, 38? I’m not at 38.” Pressed on his own number, he said, “I don’t believe I could be beaten by anybody. I think that if I needed it, which I don’t, I think 60.” He later added, “I think I’d be in the 60s now. Now, in the Republican Party, I’m way up. Show him the 99 percent. Have you seen it?”

Public surveys in the Independent’s account sit far below that claim. A New York Times/Siena College poll put approval at 34 percent, the lowest for a president nearing midterms since Harry Truman in 1946. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted Oct. 16-19 found 34 percent approve and 65 percent disapprove. Pew Research Center, fielding Sept. 28-Oct. 4, had 30 percent approve and 68 percent disapprove. A separate Reuters/Ipsos reading of 31 percent was the lowest of both Trump terms, according to CNN’s Harry Enten. Trump cited Enten’s data on MAGA loyalty to buttress his case. Enten reported Trump took 99 percent of the MAGA Republican vote in 2024 and held 98 percent approval among MAGA Republicans in September. Enten also found Trump’s net approval on inflation had swung from plus 8 in 2024 to minus 45 ahead of the midterms.