During a discussion of whether Donald Trump bringing on board Breitbart chief Steve Bannon would help the GOP nominee’s campaign, conservative commentator Dana Perino slapped down Fox News host Eric Bolling’s argument that polls don’t matter.
After Perino said Breitbart has a history of cherry-picking polls to fit their narrative of a triumphant Trump, Bolling responded, “These polls, Dana, honestly, we have to stop with these polls.”
“They’re insane with these polls,” Bolling continued, as someone just out-of-frame sighed heavily. “Just look at what’s going on. You look at a Trump rally, and there’s 12, 15, 10,000 people –”
“Eric, you cannot believe that,” Perino jumped in before Bolling finished by saying he thinks crowd size “speaks volumes” about the strength of a candidate’s campaign.
“It’s a real disservice to his supporters to lie to them that those polls don’t matter,” Perino said. “You cannot take 12,000 people at a rally that are your definite supporters, that are going to show up to campaign, and then say the polls are wrong.”
Bolling went on to explain “why polls really shouldn’t matter, or shouldn’t ever matter.”
“You pick up the phone and say, ‘Who are you going to vote for?’ That person says, ‘Well, I’m going to vote for Hillary Clinton.’ But they’re not out there voting,” he said. “The people getting out in the street and going to a rally, those are people who will get up off the couch.”
Perino fired back, saying Bolling was making the same argument used in 2012, when Mitt Romney supporters argued polls that showed him losing were wrong and then felt “so mad and disappointed” on Election Day.
After the show, Perino said in a string of tweets that she was among those “sucked into” a “sense of complacency” about the polls in 2012. She vowed she would “NEVER EVER fall for that again.”
“I will not lie to you about the state of this race. I won’t do it. No amount of peer pressure digital or otherwise can move me,” she tweeted.
Watch the full exchange on “The Five” below via YouTube:
Shrub’s press secretary. I’m not sure any amount of truth telling now, Dana, will make up for that. But A for effort.
Oh, no, you didn’t, Dana ! “Slap down” ? Eric “Boobs on the ground” Bolling ? A knee in the groin is the very least, you can do…
Dana phrases it as “not lying”, but really she just does not want to be stupidly, obviously WRONG.
GOP = Math/Science/Facts/Reality is hard.
GOP = “Math/Science/Facts/Reality is a liberal conspiracy”
FIFY