Fox’s Kilmeade rebukes Trump 2020 press secretary on air: ‘Don’t call Fox News pollsters fake’

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Friday sparred with Trump campaign press secretary Hogan Gidley for suggesting a recent Fox News poll was “fake.”

The exchange came the same week that a Fox News survey found President Trump trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in key battleground states, with the former vice president holding a 9-point lead in Michigan and an 11-point lead in Pennsylvania — two states Trump won in 2016.

“You touched on some polls. Most of those are fake,” Gidley said Friday on “Fox & Friends.” “They oversample Democrats.”

Kilmeade later rebuked Gidley, saying: “I know the people that do the polls. They don’t do it fake. They do a really good job.”

“They might not be accurate in the end, I don’t know,” Kilmeade added.

“Well, the people are great,” Gidley added before asking, “Doesn’t accuracy determine how great it is?”

“I’m not saying they’re Nostradamus. But I am just saying … they’re professionals,” Kilmeade retorted. “So don’t call Fox News pollsters fake.”

“Well, the methodology is flawed at the very least. How’s that?” Gidley responded.

“That is what the president has said before,” co-host Steve Doocy said.

Trump has regularly dismissed polls that show him with low approval ratings or with Biden leading in the 2020 race.

The president and his allies have long pointed to the 2016 election results as a reason for distrusting polls. That year, few polls suggested Trump would win the Electoral College, though they accurately indicated he would lose the popular vote.

Trump trails Biden by 8.7 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics index of polls.