Editor's Note: An earlier version of this post wrongly aligned the views of Eric Bolling and Greg Gutfeld. This post has been updated to reflect that the stated views on polling, in particular, are expressed by Bolling, not Gutfeld. In fact, Gutfeld pointed out the network's problems with 2012 polling coverage. We regret the error and apologize to Greg Gutfeld.

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

Any commander will tell you that when it's all bad news, you've got to create some good news to feed the troops. You've got to keep spirits up. So now that Donald Trump is sinking in virtually all the polls, it's just about time for him to say they're all rigged and biased.

Which he has—often.

But he's not the only one. Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast reported this week on the emerging cottage industry of Poll Trutherism in the Age of Trump, and now it looks like Fox News wants a cut of the action. Here's Eric Bolling of The Five—the best show on TV—breaking down why polling doesn't matter because rallies:

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Now, we could go to town all day on the logic of this. (No, the Trump campaign's rally attendance stats are not a better judge of the electorate than scientific polling from dozens of independent sources. No, the people who show up at rallies are not a representative sample of the electorate. No, drawing 10,000 people to a rally in Connecticut does not mean you will win the majority of Connecticut's 2,821,247 voting-age citizens, no matter how motivated your rally-goers are.)

The more pressing issue here is that this was clearly a cheap scam, as poor Dana Perino—forced to endure this for an entire segment—tried to point out when she said that what Bolling was doing "is a disservice to [Trump's] supporters." Really, the aim here was to convince people the race is still close so they'll keep watching, and so they'll be extra angry if Trump does eventually lose big—and keep watching Fox.

In fact, they discuss a similar phenomenon from 2012 in the segment, as The New York Times' Jonathan Martin pointed out on Twitter:

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Wow: at 120 mark 1 fox personality reminds another that they lied to viewers in 2012 about the polls being wronghttps://t.co/2tNoi6Q4iM — Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) August 18, 2016

Four years ago, Fox insisted the polling was wrong and Romney was going to win all the way to the bitter end. That bitter end, of course, was Karl Rove's on-air meltdown over a few mythical counties in Ohio, when Megyn Kelly journeyed down the hall to the pollsters' office just to shut him down:

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It might not have gone so well for Karl, but everyone else made it out the other side. It's the new business model: Just say, "LOL, nothing matters" over and over and hope they stay tuned in.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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