While reporting on Donald Trump’s surrender in Georgia, CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and correspondent Sara Murray couldn’t help but bothered by the nagging thought that this may all help the Trump campaign.
“Trump himself has not been downplaying this. I mean, he has certainly seen how he uses these exact moments to his political advantage,” Collins observed, leading to Murray questioning the benefit of releasing Trump’s mugshot to the public.
"He does use these - he uses these for fundraising. He uses these to rally his base.That's one of the questions about the sort of value of a mug shot in this case, right? Sure, it's treating Donald Trump, if he does get one, the same as any other defendant. But you are also giving him a photo that there is no doubt that he is going to use on promotional material, he's going to use on fundraising material.”
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Despite these apparent concerns, CNN ended up being the first network to have the mugshot leaked to them.
Earlier in the week CNN was pained to report that Donald Trump’s approval had only been on the rise amid a barrage of indictments.
“This is [from] Quinnipiac University,” CNN’s Harry Enten opened, reporting on the latest polling data on a hypothetical Trump vs. Biden matchup . “It was a two point race in February. Look where it is now, it’s a one-point race. That’s well within the margin of error. Take away one thing one thing from this - there are a lot of Democrats who simply can’t believe that Trump cannot win again. The polling indicates that Trump is, in fact, in a stronger position at this point than he was during the entire 2020 campaign, according to the national polls. If we had state level polling, I wouldn’t even be surprised if Trump were ahead in the swing states that are most important.”
Of note, Quinnipiac University’s polls have historically massively underestimated the support of Republicans. Heading into the 2020 presidential election for instance, Quinnipiac predicted that Biden would win with a 10-point margin of victory, defeating Trump 51-41. The official results ended up being 51.3-46.8, meaning that Quinnipiac underestimated Trump’s support by (at least) 5.5 percentage points.
Matt Palumbo is the author of Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers: How the Left Hijacked and Weaponized the Fact-Checking Industry and The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros
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