ABC Gets Internal Polls Trump Said Don’t Exist

The one constant with Donald Trump is that he lies - all the time and about almost everything.  Thus, when rumors got out that his re-election campaign had done internal polls that were devastating to Trump's 2020 hopes, it is no surprise that Trump lied.  Indeed, he claimed the internal polls did not exist - I head a replay of his lie just this morning.  Now, the lie has been exposed.  ABC News secured the internal polls and they were indeed grim for Trump and his unwashed, knuckle dragging supporters.  Here are highlights from ABC News: 

Data from President Donald Trump's first internal reelection campaign poll conducted in March, obtained exclusively by ABC News, showed him losing a matchup by wide margins to former Vice President Joe Biden in key battleground states.

Trump has repeatedly denied that such data exists.

The polling data, revealed for the first time by ABC News, showed a double-digit lead for Biden in Pennsylvania 55-39 and Wisconsin 51-41 and had Biden leading by seven points in Florida. In Texas, a Republican stronghold, the numbers showed the president only leading by two points.

ABC News did not obtain the poll’s early matchups against other candidates.  The New York Times was first to report the existence of the internal polls.

When presented by ABC News with these numbers, the Trump campaign confirmed the data saying in a statement that the numbers were old and that they have seen huge swings in Trump’s favor. The Trump campaign did not provide the results of the full 17 state poll, matchups against other candidates nor any updated polling figures. In the recent days [Trump] the president has continued to lash out against reports that his campaign’s internal polling showed him trailing in key battleground states, slamming the numbers as “phony polling information.” Trump has called his internal poll numbers “unbelievable” and that he was “the strongest I’ve ever been.” When Stephanopoulos mentioned reports of polls commissioned by the Trump campaign that showed Biden ahead of him in key states, [Trump] the president said “those polls don't exist.” A day later, the president took to Twitter and again claimed internal polling showing him behind in battleground states didn’t exist.

Liar, liar pants on fire.  Trump is despicable.

ABC Rightly Dumps Tony Perkins From Sunday News Show

I and many others have been arguing for years that no reputable news channel should ever offer a platform to hate group leader Tony Perkins who has documented white supremacist ties and who heads an organization certified as an anti-gay hate group.  Indeed, recently a petition was launched making this argument.  Now, finally, someone at ABC News finally got the message as Perkins was unceremoniously dropped from a panel on The Week that was to discuss the Orlando massacre.   For years Perkins has been preaching anti-gay animus and outright lies yet time and again he'd be given a platform.. Seriously, would someone who advocated lynching blacks or murdering Jews have been given a platform?  Think Progress looks at what will hopefully become a trend among news organizations and cause Perkins and his like to be banned from networks that want to be considered responsible and interested in objective fact.  Here are highlights:

This week, a prominent news agency considered offering a platform to the leader of an anti-LGBT hate group to discuss the Orlando shooting, then quietly dropped him from the show without ever mentioning that it was a bad idea in the first place.

On Friday morning, ABC News released a preview of its guest line-up for This Week, its Sunday morning political talk show. Among those listed to join the “Powerhouse Roundtable” was Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC).

FRC has long been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a prominent anti-LGBT hate-group, and Perkins himself has a notorious reputation for his anti-LGBT vitriol. Though he often tames his rhetoric in mainstream news appearances to sound like his anti-gay views represent all U.S. Christians, he then tells FRC’s audiences things like that homosexuality leads to “eternal damnation” and is “harmful” to individuals “and to society as a whole.”

In the past, FRC spokespeople have even tried to blame other shootings on the advance of LGBT equality.

The group Faithful America quickly launched a petition calling on ABC to drop Perkins from the lineup. Noting that Perkins “has repeatedly accused gay men of molesting children,” the petition also pointed out that no other Christian leader was scheduled to offer a different perspective on behalf of people of faith. This is a recurring problem in media; evangelicals and other conservative Christians are over-represented in media appearances, but progressive faith voices and representatives from the Humanist, atheist, and agnostic communities are severely underrepresented.

Southern Poverty Law Center has a rundown of the vile things Perkins regularly says about the LGBT community here.  Perkins and his hate-filled followers truly need to become social and political lepers who are shunned by decent, moral people and by politicians who want to be considered anything more than demagogues and/or pandering whores. 

New Poll Shows Dramatic Rise In Support for Gay Marriage

More bad news for the Christofascists and proponents of DOMA and Proposition 8: a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows support for gay marriage now hitting 58%.  While polls are in no way binding on how the U. S. Supreme Court may rule in  United States v. Windsor  (Docket 12-307), which challenges the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), and Hollingsworth v. Perry (Docket 12-144), which challenges the constitutionality of California’s Proposition , the Court does not exist in a vacuum and increased support for gay marriage could help tip justices sitting on the fence to rule with the gay supportive justices inclined to strike down both DOMA and proposition 8.  I suspect the folks at NOM, FRC, The Family Foundation and similar virulently anti-gay organizations are not jumping with joy over the new polling results.  Here are highlights from ABC News:

Support for gay marriage reached a new high in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, marking a dramatic change in public attitudes on the subject across the past decade. Fifty-eight percent of Americans now say it should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That number has grown sharply in ABC News/Washington Post polls, from a low of 32 percent in a 2004 survey of registered voters, advancing to a narrow majority for the first time only two years ago, and now up again to a significant majority for the first time.(See PDF with full results, charts and tables here.)

Most Americans, moreover, say the U.S. Constitution should trump state laws on gay marriage, a question now before the U.S. Supreme Court. And – in another fundamental shift – just 24 percent now see homosexuality as a choice, down from 40 percent nearly 20 years ago. It’s a view that closely relates to opinions on the legality of same-sex marriage.

Support for gay marriage, though, has gone from 47 percent to today’s 58 percent in just the last three years – culminating a period of change first endorsed by some state courts, then by some political figures, notably with Hillary Clinton expressing support for same-sex marriage today, and Barack Obama doing the same last May, a position he went on to underscore in his second inaugural address in January.

Sharp differences across groups remain, but there have been large advances across the board. In one striking gap, gay marriage is supported by a vast 81 percent of adults younger than 30, compared with just 44 percent of seniors. But that’s up by more than 10 points in both groups just since March 2011, and by more than 20 points in both groups since 2004, the low point for gay marriage support in ABC/Post polls.

Among the declining number of people who see homosexuality as a choice, just 29 percent support gay marriage, with nearly seven in 10 opposed. Among those who reject this view, support for same-sex marriage soars to 73 percent.

The Christofascists and snake oil merchants of the "ex-gay" ministries are clearly losing the battle of public opinion.  Meanwhile, I can only ponder how much aid might have been given to the poor and hungry war if the Christofascists had heeded the Gospel message rather than squandered millions marketing hate and denigrating gay citizens.