President Donald Trump’s public demand on Sunday for the Federal Communications Commission to punish journalists over “fake polls” which show he is unpopular was no aberration. The president has long argued that news organizations fabricate negative results in order to damage his political standing — and he is retreating to that conspiracy theory with greater frequency as the midterm elections approach. 

Trump has lashed out at polls, which he often calls “fake polls,” at least 39 times since he returned to the White House last January — and at least 9 times in August 2026 alone, more than any other month — according to a Media Matters review of his statements on social media and transcripts of his public events compiled by Roll Call’s Factba.se. 

Polls show Trump’s support has fallen throughout his term, and that he is now near historic levels of unpopularity. Republicans worry that he will drag down candidates across the country in November, jeopardizing the party’s control of both houses of Congress. But rather than trying to change course, the president routinely claims those polls are fake and that contrary to their results, his “REAL poll numbers … are the best they have ever been.”

The president has denounced the purportedly fabricated polls most frequently on his Truth Social platform, devoting at least 22 posts to the topic since his return to office. But he has also offered the baseless allegation in rally speeches and a press gaggle; during remarks putatively focused on Women’s History Month and the economy; during a Cabinet meeting and a small business summit; discussing benefits for senior residents in Florida’ and in front of families of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants; and in interviews with both right-wing and mainstream news outlets. 

Trump seems most enraged by the purported involvement in the conspiracy of Fox News, the MAGA propaganda network that vigorously supports his administration and typically shields viewers from news about his unpopularity — but also produces polling with results that are typically similar to those conducted by other media outlets. The president has denounced “fake polls” produced by or cited on the network at least 8 times, more than any other media outlet. 

Other outlets he has claimed are participants in the plot against him include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN, and MSNOW.

The president’s inability to publicly accept that he is actually extremely unpopular is ridiculous, to be sure. But his crackpottery also fuels his legal assault on the free press and buttresses the MAGA movement's election denial machine.

Challenged on his poor polling, Trump claims the polls are fake

Trump has repeatedly been confronted with his unpopularity by interviewers, only to tell them to their faces that they are citing fabricated polls.

When Trump claimed to have “the best poll numbers I've ever had” in an August 2025 interview with CNBC’s Joe Kernen, the host pushed back, saying that wasn’t true and that “your haters cite polls that have you down in the 30s.” 

“But they're fake polls, Joe, I had a lot of fake polls,” the president responded.

Ten months later, Axios’ Marc Caputo told the president during an interview, “Every presidency has a lifecycle, and as a president comes to his, in a second term, to his last midterm, his party usually loses control of the House, his poll numbers usually start to decline and he starts to weaken, and that's happening to you.”

“No, it’s not,” Trump replied. “Fake polls. I have great poll numbers.”

Poll trutherism carries real risks for the country 

There’s more to the president’s tinfoil-hat fixation on the “fake polls” conspiracy theory than an old man who can’t accept that the public hates him.

First, Trump’s claim is the foundation of any attempted scheme to overturn midterm election results. He is defying the conventional wisdom that his unpopularity will make it harder for Republicans to win in November, instead insisting that he is actually beloved. If the polls are right and the GOP suffers, he will be poised, as he has in the past, to claim the election was rigged thanks to massive voter fraud and seek to have results overturned.  

Second, Trump uses his attacks on polling to fuel his legal assault on the free press. On Sunday, he called on the FCC to take action, suggesting that the agency punish media outlets for using supposed “FAKE POLLS”:

The president has repeatedly insinuated or stated outright that the purveyors of “fake polls” should face legal jeopardy. 

Trump, who has regularly sued news outlets across both of his terms, is currently embroiled in a years-long suit against the Des Moines Register and its pollster, J. Ann Selzer, over an Iowa poll published in November 2024. He has also threatened to sue the Times over its “fake results.”

The president has also suggested that the purveyors of “fake polls” should face criminal probes. He claimed in April 2025 that media pollsters “should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD,” explaining, “They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse.”

“Fake and Fraudulent Polling should be, virtually, a criminal offense,” Trump added in a January post. He listed a slew of media outlets he suggested had produced “Fraudulent Polling” in 2020 because they were “trying to influence the Election” which he falsely claimed to have “won in a Landslide.” 

He added that “something has to be done” and declared that he is “going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward!”

FCC chairman Brendan Carr, Attorney General Todd Blanche, and FBI director Kash Patel may never figure out a way to specifically target pollsters. But the message that is ringing out to them, loudly and clearly, is that any time they can use their power to make journalists suffer, they should do it. And they’re carrying out those orders without hesitation.