Gingrich swings at pollsters for Trump

Donald Trump need not concern himself with polls showing him losing to Hillary Clinton in late June, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich insisted Tuesday, calling upon recent poll sponsored by ABC News and The Washington Post to be withdrawn or redesigned. And if Trump is within five points of Clinton on the Friday before Election Day, Gingrich predicted, the presumptive Republican nominee will be the next president.

"The Washington Post poll has her tying with Trump with men. Now the odds against that happening are so great that even given the total bias of The Washington Post and the degree to which they're now committing a hatchet job on Trump, I think some sense of professional dignity should have led them either to withdraw the poll or redesign it," Gingrich told "Fox & Friends," referring to the co-sponsor of the poll co-produced by the Post's polling team with Langer Research Associates.


Trump himself attacked the poll's methodology on Sunday, tweeting, "The @ABC poll sample is heavy on Democrats. Very dishonest - why would they do that? Other polls good!"

"The 'dirty' poll done by @ABC @washingtonpost is a disgrace. Even they admit that many more Democrats were polled. Other polls were good," he wrote in another.

Trump's campaign revoked the Post's credentials to cover his events earlier this month after it published a headline on a story recapping his comments on TV shows regarding the Orlando shooting. The headline initially read "Donald Trump Suggests President Obama Was Involved With Orlando Shooting" before being changed to “Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando shooting.”

Langer Research Associates referred a request for comment to ABC News.

Gingrich called the poll and similar ones showing Trump losing "an absurdity."

"It's an absurdity. Trump is down about by five or six points after several weeks in which the elite media have done everything they can to block him and to protect Hillary. This is natural in a right-left race. Reagan had the same problems. By the end of the summer, people will start sifting through it. If Trump is still standing on the Friday before the election, she will lose by a huge margin."

Asked what he meant by "still standing," Gingrich said that Clinton and the media will have to "pulverize him so he's totally utterly unacceptable."

"And if he's within five points he'll just beat her. I mean, look what happened with Brexit," Gingrich said. "What happens is the elites, the establishment all pile on. The average citizen will not tell pollsters the truth. You get much better results for Trump for example in a computerized online poll than a telephone poll because people don't want to tell the pollster something they think is not socially acceptable."

As far as reaching out to independent voters, where Trump edged Clinton by two points in the same ABC News/Washington Post survey, Gingrich said Trump "is going to go after everybody" in terms of seeking support.

"I mean, this is a guy who I think -- I think he'll be in South Side of Chicago campaigning," Gingrich said, offering another prediction. "I think he's going to be all in the Latino community campaigning. And he has a very simple message, which is the message coming out of Europe. If you like the way things are right now, she is the head of the establishment. If you think we better change, Donald Trump is your only vote. I think that could be a very compelling message."