Simon Ateba's Morning Rant: Trump Denies Reality as Polls Show Him Slipping Behind Harris—Will His Refusal to Recalibrate Cost Him the Election?

MORNING RANT: Refusing to accept reality and recalibrate his campaign to win - Donald Trump claims he’s leading in most polls. That’s a lie. He claims real polls have him leading. That’s also a lie. He claims Harris is being hammered in the polls. That too is a lie. He posted that the crowd at Harris’s rally in Detroit, Michigan, was fake. That was also a lie. His supporters shared a fake ad of “actors” being requested to attend Harris’s rally in Arizona. That was also a lie. It was a fake ad that was previously used against Trump in 2017. It was fact-checked then and fact-checked again this year to be fake. They also shared that people came to the rally for a concert. That was also a lie. The concert had long been postponed to October 25.

They also claimed that Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, and all others were oversampling Democrats to manipulate their polls. That was also a lie. The same polls by the same networks showed Trump leading for months—before the debate, after the debate, and after he was almost assassinated. Now, the same polls, using the same methods by the same people, including many Republican or conservative pollsters, show him losing strength and falling behind.

I can go on and on. Trump and many of his supporters are refusing to accept the reality that Harris and Walz could actually beat him if he doesn’t recalibrate his campaign. Many supporters are resorting to denying reality, attacking those who state the facts, and claiming those who point out the truth are fake, while those who spread disinformation are credible and great people. The opposite is true.

It’s an election. Things go up and down, new challenges emerge, and new candidates appear. Strategies change. Polls go up and down. Ultimately, it’s about who turns out on Election Day to cast their vote, but long before that, millions of mail-in ballots would have been sent. What is surprising is that the people who follow me get upset and prefer to fall for the lie rather than acknowledging reality and recalibrating things to win. They claim being a good journalist means going along with the lies and disinformation, becoming a partisan hack, and ultimately losing your credibility.

Here is the truth: if Trump wants to win, he has to accept reality, understand that things are shifting, and adapt. He also has to take Kamala Harris seriously and campaign as if he’s the underdog. The ground game has to be improved, more volunteers are needed, and more money is required in all states, especially across battleground states. Harris may have been an unpopular vice president, but she’s raising more money than Biden, attracting the crowds Biden could not, doing well in the polls, and also receiving key endorsements—all this even before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week. She might lose momentum after that and her honeymoon might end but she also might not. We don’t know what would happen between now and November.

However, the first rule to losing a war is to underestimate your opponent, and that’s what I see many people doing. May God help us.