U.S. President-elect Donald Trump speaks at a news conference at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on December 16, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
By Ben Zeisloft December 17, 2024 at 6:03am
President-elect Donald Trump announced on Monday that he would file a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register after a poll from the outlet predicted days before the election that he would lose the state of Iowa.
J. Ann Selzer, the president of Iowa-based polling firm Selzer & Company, released a poll showing Trump losing Iowa to Vice President Kamala Harris by three percentage points, even though he ultimately won the state by a decisive 13 points.
Trump revealed at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida that he would file lawsuits against several news outlets, including the Des Moines Register because of the poll.
“I’m going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster, who got me right all the time,” Trump said.
JUST IN: Donald Trump announces he is launching a lawsuit against pollster Ann Selzer for allegedly rigging her Iowa poll to influence the 2024 election.
Trump also announced that he would be suing 60 Minutes for editing Kamala Harris’ answers.
“In my opinion, it was fraud, and… pic.twitter.com/xq6rqdb3Ro
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 16, 2024
“And then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points, and it became the biggest story all over the world,” he continued.
Trump said that he found “the way she did it” to be particularly suspect.
“She brought it down two weeks before, she said I was going to only win by four. That was a big story. But that was good, because she brought it down from 22 points to four, or whatever the number was. Way up, way up. Easy win,” he continued. “And then she brought it down very smartly to four a couple of weeks before, and everyone said, ‘Wow, that’s amazing. He’s only up by four points.’
“Then she brought it down to where I was down by three or four, whatever the number she used.”
Do you think Trump will win this lawsuit?
Trump contended that “it was fraud and it was election interference.”
“She’s gotten me right always. She’s a very good pollster,” the president-elect said. “She knows what she was doing.”
Selzer previously addressed criticisms toward the controversial poll during a discussion with Iowa Press, where the pollster said that she was still not sure why the results missed the mark.
“I’m not here to break any news. If you were hoping that I had landed on exactly why things went wrong, I have not,” Selzer said, as reported by Fox News.
“It does sort of awaken me in the middle of the night and I think, well maybe I should check this, this is something that would be very odd if it were to happen,” she commented.
She added: “But we’ve explored everything. The Des Moines Register in an unprecedented move for transparency has put online our cross tabs, our waiting system and my analysis, and that I’ve not needed to update because it was pretty complete.
“We don’t know. Do I wish I knew? Yes, I wish I knew.”
Trump also plans to file lawsuits against 60 Minutes, arguing that they deceptively edited an interview with Harris by taking “Kamala’s answer, which was a crazy answer, a horrible answer, and they took the whole answer out and they replaced it with something else.”
The president-elect will also sue Pulitzer “because reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post, got Pulitzer Prizes for their wonderful, accurate, and highly professional reporting on the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax,” he said sarcastically.
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