***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
With almost a year and a half to go until the 2020 general election, Tuesday’s editions of ABC’s World News Tonight and CBS Evening News showed that the media didn’t learn anything from 2016. Ahead of the first Democratic Party debate, both broadcast networks boasted about former Vice President Joe Biden’s 13-point national lead against President Trump.
Despite Trump’s massive 2016 upset (proving all the national polls to be grossly inaccurate), CBS fill-in anchor Margaret Brennan led into the story by bragging about how “a new Quinnipiac University poll gives Joe Biden a 13-point lead nationally over President Trump.” She also touted the forthcoming report by political correspondent Ed O’Keefe, suggesting it showed why the “Trump campaign has a reason to be worried.”
O’Keefe admitted that “there are 237 days until the Iowa caucuses and 511 days until election day 2020.” But that didn’t stop him from reveling in claims from anonymous sources that suggested: “internal Trump campaign polling shows Biden leading the president in several key states Mr. Trump will need to keep the White House, including Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona.”
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