Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against the media and against pollsters on Monday, alleging that both were part of a “rigged system” trying to undermine his candidacy.
Speaking in a rally in St Augustine, Florida, Trump falsely claimed that hacked emails of John Podesta showed that the Clinton campaign chair was “rigging the polls by oversampling Democrats”.
The Republican nominee, whose campaign is managed by pollster Kellyanne Conway, called this “a voter suppression technique”. Oversampling is a method used by pollsters to get better measurements of specific sub-groups and is entirely normal in polling.
The statement followed a tweet from the Republican on Monday morning in which he claimed: “Major story that the Dems are making up phony polls in order to suppress the the Trump [sic]. We are going to WIN!” Almost every independent poll has consistently shown a steady lead for Clinton since late July and Conway has repeatedly conceded in recent days that Trump is behind.
Trump also escalated his attacks on media. He said the press, which he described as being composed of “thieves and crooks”, may be even more corrupt than the rival whom he has repeatedly derided as “Crooked Hillary”.
The Ivy League-educated Trump, who lives in an ornate penthouse on Fifth Avenue in New York, also slammed journalists as being out of touch with working Americans, saying: “The media is entitled, condescending and even contemptuous of people who don’t share their elitist views.” He warned vaguely of those who “rig the media” and said: “They can wield absolute power over your life, your economy, and your country.”
In addition, Trump complained at his rally, which was broadcast live on cable news: “Sometimes I’ll have these great events and it isn’t covered.”
His comments came on the same day that Trump launched his own media enterprise. For the next two weeks, the campaign will be producing its own live news program at 6.30pm every night.
The broadcast’s premiere on Monday night featured a ticker of pro-Trump news, commercial breaks with pro-Trump ads and interviews with campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and RNC top strategist Sean Spicer. The show began as rumors grow of the Republican nominee potentially starting “Trump TV” if he falls short of the White House in November.
Trump also returned to his patented rhetoric about jobs and trade. He continued to reiterate themes from what was billed as a “contract with the American voter”, unveiled in a speech in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, while adding in Trumpian flourishes like his statement in a Tampa rally on Monday night that “we’re losing our jobs like a bunch of babies”.
However, he did defend himself from accusations of close ties to Russia by insisting: “I have nothing to do with Russia folks, I’ll give you a written statement.”
Trump has long spoken warmly of Vladimir Putin and a number of his current and former staffers have had business ties with Russia. In addition, Trump himself has repeatedly sought Russian investment in his real estate projects. The Republican nominee’s son Donald Trump Jr even bragged in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
Also on Monday, Trump once again made an appeal to minority voters to support him. The Republican nominee, who has repeatedly compared inner cities to war zones and suggested African Americans and Latinos “have no education” and “no jobs”, attacked Clinton’s outreach to those communities. “She has abused the African American community, she has abused the Hispanic community,” he proclaimed.”
Trump is in the middle of a three-day swing across Florida, a key election state where Clinton currently holds a four-point lead, according to the RealClearPolitics aggregate of public polling. He told the crowd in St Augustine that he was winning in the Sunshine state.