Trump suing pollster Ann Selzer for 'election interference'

By 
 December 18, 2024

Donald Trump is suing the Des Moines Register over former pollster Ann Selzer's wildly inaccurate poll that gave false hope of victory to Trump's Democratic rivals.

The Selzer poll wrongly predicted that Kamala Harris would win Iowa, but Trump kept the state in Republican hands and ended up winning a commanding popular vote victory to send him back to Washington.

Trump suing pollster

Iowa, a former swing state, has moved steadily rightward since Trump first won it in 2016. He ended up winning Iowa by a commanding 13 points last month, repudiating Selzer's prediction that Harris would win by three points.

Until this year, Selzer was widely considered an accurate pollster, leading some to accuse her of engaging in a deliberate effort to aid the Harris campaign. Selzer announced her retirement after the election.

"The Harris Poll was no 'miss' but rather an attempt to influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election," Trump's lawsuit says.

A spokesperson for the Des Moine Register, where Selzer worked as a pollster for years, said, "We stand by our reporting on the matter and believe a lawsuit would be without merit."

Trump discussed his lawsuits against the media at a wide-ranging press conference Monday, where he made himself available to reporters in a stark contrast with predecessor Joe Biden.

"I'm not doing this because I want to, I'm doing this because I feel l have an obligation to," Trump said.

"I'm going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster, who got it right all the time and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three of four points," he continued. "And it became the biggest story of all time, all over the world."

Vindication for Trump

This week, Trump won vindication against the liberal media as ABC News agreed to pay him $15 million to settle a defamation case. The network's anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely claimed that a jury found Trump liable of raping advice columnist E. Jean Carroll.

Trump is also suing CBS News for a deceptively edited interview with Harris that made her answer sound more intelligible.

Trump's lawsuits against the "Fake News" are certain to inflame critics who have accused him of wanting to pursue retribution against political rivals. Of course, the alarmist rhetoric about retribution is coming from those who spent the past year cheering for Trump's prosecution and imprisonment.

With Trump's legal troubles now clearing up, he's looking to turn the tables against those who have mistreated him, including flagrantly dishonest reporters.

While Trump is already seeking civil remedies, it's less clear that he will pursue criminal prosecutions of his enemies, although he has left the door open to that scenario.

" A free people [claim] their rights, as derived from the laws of nature."
Thomas Jefferson