You’d think the leading voices in the media and among pollsters would have learned their lesson after being so off the mark in their coverage of Donald Trump.

They’re losing their grasp on both reality and their readers. But instead of correcting course, many of them are doubling down in the sanity.

Just last week we saw this in play in the pages of – where else? – The New York Times.

As if not content to let its November election night prediction that Hillary Clinton had a 92% chance of winning the presidency be the worst of it, the English-speaking world’s liberal paper of record reached a new low in overtly politicizing its sports section.

On Wednesday, the New England Patriots visited the White House for a ceremony with President Trump customarily held for Super Bowl champions. The Times posted online and to social media pictures, allegedly showing the turnout for the 2015 event with then-President Barack Obama and the 2017 turnout with Trump.

The 2015 picture shows people crowding around the president and then overflowing up the stairs of the White House. This year’s picture shows fewer people, with only a crowd around the president and nobody standing on the adjacent stairs. At face value, it appears that fewer people attended the ceremony with Trump. The Times was clearly imply that the Super Bowl champions disliked Trump compared to Obama.

Patriots' turnout for President Obama in 2015 vs. Patriots' turnout for President Trump today: https://t.co/OxMEOqZonIpic.twitter.com/pLmJWhOw1j — NYT Sports (@NYTSports) April 19, 2017

Big problem. It was a total lie. The team’s official Twitter account waded into the scandal, explaining: “These photos lack context. Facts: In 2015, over football staff were on the stairs. In 2017, they were seated on the South Lawn.”

These photos lack context. Facts: In 2015, over 40 football staff were on the stairs. In 2017, they were seated on the South Lawn. https://t.co/iIYtV0hR6Y — New England Patriots (@Patriots) April 20, 2017

A day after this fiasco, a pollster, who accurately predicted Trump’s victory, gave a speech in Toronto about how it was that so many others in his field got the election so wrong.

“They brought their bias into the coverage of the race,” John McLaughlin, CEO of McLaughlin & Associates, told me on my SiriusXM radio show Thursday before speaking to the National Citizens Coalition, which is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary.

“They wanted to report there was no way Trump could win. They wanted to report that Hillary had an electoral cakewalk.”

It’s one thing to do this with news coverage where you can choose what to include and what to leave out. But how is this possible when it comes to polls? Aren’t the numbers just the numbers? Not quite, McLaughlin explained.

McLaughlin actually came on board as one of the Trump campaign’s official pollsters and still tallies numbers about the president’s performance.

But his prediction of Trump’s victory didn’t come from just telling his boss what he wanted to hear. It was about not looking at the numbers the way the other guys were doing it.

“A lot of people thought Hillary Clinton was Barack Obama and that she’d have the exact same turn out as Obama had,” said McLaughlin, whose past clients have included Stephen Harper, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jeb Bush.

The Democrats and their legion of media allies saw the voter model as static, whereas McLaughlin was updating his model based on “change” voters.

“They were making their judgments based on more minority voters and young voters coming out and they didn’t as much as they did for Obama,” McLaughlin added.

At the same time, Trump was seeing support increase from working class voters and independents.

Not that the mainstream wanted to acknowledge it in November. In fact, they still don’t.

The public can’t trust all the polls they’re seeing from places, such as Reuters, Quinnipiac and Gallup. This is because in many cases they’re under-sampling Republican perspectives.

The final adjusted exit poll data reveals that the presidential election featured 33% registered Republicans and 37% Democrats. Current polls out now should replicate this breakdown of respondents in their sampling.

But McLaughlin pointed out the fine print in their methodology shows in some cases they’re only including around 23% of Republican voices. They’re short-changing Trump a full 10% of likely supporters, making him look worse.

“Republicans and Trump voters didn’t walk away,” he said.

It looks like no degree of humiliation can get the mainstream to clean up its act. Tough for them. It’s their funeral.