Donald Trump promised Monday to launch a lawsuit against The Des Moines Register over a preelection poll that found Vice President Kamala Harris had “leapfrogged” the Republican candidate, in a state he went on to handily win.
During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, one journalist asked Trump about his ongoing defamation cases, asking, “Could you see moving that to other people with individual platforms, social media influencers, people that—”
“Or newspapers, yeah.” Trump interrupted.
“Yeah, oh, I do. I think you have to do it, because they’re very dishonest,” Trump continued. “We need a great media, we need a fair media. We need, uh, it’s very important. And we need borders, we need walls, but we need borders and we need fair elections.”
Trump went on rambling on about how they were still counting votes in California, which is not true. The weave eventually wove itself back, and the president-elect continued his pledge to sue newspapers over alleged defamation.
“I have a few others that I’m doing, uh, I’m gonna, as an example, we’re bringing—I’m doing this not because I want to, I’m doing this because I have an obligation to—I’m gonna be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster, who got me right all the time. And then just before the election, she said I was gonna lose by three or four points, and it became the biggest story all over the world … because I was gonna win Iowa by 20 points. The farmers love me, and I love the farmers,” he said.
Trump was speaking about pollster Ann Selzer, whose Iowa poll anticipated that Harris would lead Trump by three points in the state. In reality, he won Iowa by 13 points, making for a 16-point error. Selzer & Co. had previously been considered the gold standard of polling in the country.
Crucially, it wasn’t the “biggest story” all over the world, but it’s one that has been bothering Trump for more than a month now. In a post on Truth Social last month, Trump called out Selzer by name and said that an investigation into her poll was “fully called for!”
As far off as Selzer’s poll was, it’s not illegal to publish a poll that doesn’t accurately predict something. Trump’s obsession with Selzer appears to be part of the president-elect’s penchant for targeting those who publish unflattering things about him.
Buried in Trump’s incoherent rambling Monday, he pledged to make good on that threat and claimed that Selzer’s poll constituted “fraud” and “election interference.” He promised to file “a major lawsuit against them, either today or tomorrow.”
Trump also mentioned his other ongoing media lawsuits against CBS News’s 60 Minutes, journalist and author Bob Woodward, and the Pulitzer Center for giving prizes to journalists who wrote about Russian interference in the 2016 election, which Trump falsely claims was a “hoax.”
Trump’s newest threat against the media comes on the heels of a $15 million settlement with ABC News in a defamation lawsuit he brought against the network—a settlement that has baffled media experts, who believe that ABC could have won the suit, and consider the network’s sudden surrender to be obedience in advance of Trump’s coming presidential term.