After hailing the New England Patriots as “total winners” for coming out on top in last night’s Super Bowl, Donald Trump got back to the business of calling the polls showing him to be speaking for the majority, “fake news.” Perhaps he was feeling the sting from last night’s Super Bowl message of diversity.
On the other hand, as NBC News’ Bradd Jaffy pointed out, CNN (“which,” he says, “Trump never watches”) had just commented on his “new low approval numbers”:
6:30am: CNN (which Trump never watches) reports new low approval numbers
7:01am: Trump tweets polls are “fake news”https://t.co/lzFObEN8Wg
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 6, 2017
Trump tweeted his outraged response:
Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2017
Notice he included just about everybody but the Trump-compliant Fox News network and CBS, which instantly makes CBS suspect (but let’s not let him divide us!).
CNN’s Brian Stelter was dismayed, as he revealed in his tweet:
I honestly thought this tweet was from a Trump parody account the first time I saw it. https://t.co/Ijhw9Toy2u
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 6, 2017
NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith observed that, in fact and contrary to Trump’s claim,
“In the end, the national polls were surprisingly on-target with the popular vote. (But of course, popular vote doesn’t determine president).”
And Bradd Jaffy helpfully added that “NBC/WSJ poll had HRC +4, she finished +2. NBC/WSJ poll shows Trump with historically low ratings.”
Meanwhile, not just Americans on the street oppose Trump’s immigration exclusivity. Some Ninety-seven companies, including Apple, Facebook, Uber, Google, Intel, Snap, and Netflix, have filed a legal brief against Trump’s Muslim ban.
The United States of America, of course, already has “extreme vetting” and no one from any of the countries in Trump’s ban have ever engaged in a terrorist attack in the United States.
Corporations point to the importance of immigrants to our economy and society, to the much-needed (and soon to be diminished) pool of trained people capable of performing needed jobs in a high-tech marketplace.
Americans don’t want people demonized on account of their religion and they don’t want walls. They want inclusion, not exclusion, and Donald Trump, who has fallen victim to his own rhetoric of hate and division, is reaping what he has sown.