On Wednesday Donald Trump was nonchalant to reporters who asked him about polls showing his presumed opponent, former Vice-President Joe Biden, leading in the race for the White House.
According to the report, Trump shrugged off the polling data saying that he does not believe in polls while calling his opponent incompetent.
“I don’t believe the polls,” Trump told Reuters during an Oval Office interview. “I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think that they will put a man in who’s incompetent.”
He continued, “And I don’t mean incompetent because of a condition that he’s got now. I mean he’s incompetent for 30 years. Everything he ever did was bad. His foreign policy was a disaster,” he added.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week showed that about 44 percent of voters would stand with behind Biden in the November elections, while 40 percent voiced their support for Trump, the wire notes.
Trump also has been not doing well in another Reuters/Ipsos survey, which showed his support in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania—the states that helped him secure the White House in 2016—wavering.
And for all his presumed nonchalance toward reports, according to the Associated Press, Trump has lashed out at his top political advisers as early as last week, when they showed him polling data of his waning support in battleground states as he meets increasing scrutiny due to his response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“I am not f–king losing to Joe Biden,” the AP reports Trump insisting in a series of tense conference calls with his top campaign officials.
His political advisers reportedly urged the President to cut back on his daily controversial coronavirus briefings and to stay out of the medical issues and focus more on the economy.
The economy is a particular point of issue for the President, who, as the AP notes, had been planning on touting the strength of the economy for his reelection campaign, as the country had been enjoying high employment levels. The coronavirus pandemic quickly and brutally turned the tide, putting increasing pressure on the President, who has vowed to bring about improvements once again.
“We built the greatest economy in the world,” Trump said earlier this month. “I’ll do it a second time.”