Luntz blasted Trump

Fox’s Luntz blasted Trump at Kock seminar

In a fresh exchange of accusations, Donald Trump says Fox should fire its focus-group moderator.

By HADAS GOLD and KENNETH P. VOGEL

Donald Trump’s feud with GOP pollster Frank Luntz escalated Monday – with Trump calling on Fox News to fire Luntz from overseeing its post-debate focus groups, and Luntz launching a profanity-laden tirade to describe the real estate showman turned renegade presidential candidate.

In an interview with POLITICO, Luntz said Trump — and Democratic presidential insurgent Bernie Sanders — are “delivering a big ‘f—- you’ to the elites in America.

“And that resonates on both sides,” Luntz said. “But ‘f—- you’ doesn’t solve anything. ‘F—- you’ doesn’t make life any better. ‘F—- you’ makes you feel good, but it doesn’t get you where you need to go. ‘F—- you’ doesn’t make America strong. ‘F—- you’ doesn’t solve anything.”

Trump responded by accusing Luntz of harboring a long-held vendetta because Trump refused to do business with Luntz’s polling firm.

“I caught him cold,” Trump told POLITICO. “And frankly, if I was [Fox News President] Roger Ailes, I’d fire that guy so fast for what he did that his head would spin.”

Monday’s war of words, another chapter in a series of Trump vs. Luntz moments, was touched off when POLITICO asked Luntz about private comments that seem to call into question his objectivity as the man who facilitates the focus groups that appear on Fox News.

Luntz has insisted in an interview with Business Insider he has nothing against Trump and is only interested in accurately assessing the race.

But sources told POLITICO that, in the days before the Aug. 6 Fox News presidential debate where a Luntz-run focus group panned Trump’s performance, the pollster told a closed-door gathering of major conservative donors in Southern California that Trump was dangerous to Republicans and was “turning what we believe into a joke.”

People present at the gathering, which was organized by the political network helmed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Kock, said Luntz argued that Trump is not a true conservative, but is “addicted” to the limelight and is likely to become increasingly enticed by the prospect of launching a third party presidential bid the longer he stays in the race.

Asked Monday about his private comments in Southern California, Luntz declined to directly address what he said at the donor confab, though he did not back away from the substance of his critique.

Luntz said people often “hear half of the comments or they hear what they want to hear and they get it wrong,” but he also called out Trump for stoking voters’ anger, without giving proper solutions.

“There’s something happening out there that is profound, but you gotta be careful; when you tap into it you better have a way to direct it. Trump has tapped into it. Bernie Sanders has tapped into it and they’re doing well, but you’re tapping into fire — that’s how hot the anger is,” Luntz said. “We are in a dangerous political environment that requires a higher standard for the candidates running. It requires them not just to stoke the anger, it’s already there. It requires them to provide the balm of solutions.”

That sentiment echoes Luntz’s presentation at the Koch donor conference. During a discussion called “Winning Messages,” he showed video clips of instances in which he said Trump had successfully connected with voters by tapping into their frustrations, according to multiple sources familiar with the meeting.

Three days after the session, Fox News hosted the first GOP presidential debate, followed immediately by a focus group conducted by Luntz, the members of which roundly criticized Trump’s performance as “angry,” repulsive and “bombastic.”

Trump responded by branding the focus group a “dumb panel” and calling Luntz “a low-class slob” and “a clown” and suggesting his polling is shaped by his failure to win polling work from Trump.

“[Luntz is] a clown. He’s got absolutely no talent whatsoever. He came to my office looking for money. He wanted to represent me in a corporate capacity which I had no interest in whatsover. The last thing I need is focus groups from Frank Luntz who can’t get himself arrested,” Trump said. “When I had no interest in hiring him, he went on to do some negative focus groups on television and frankly, he shouldn’t be working for Fox because he’s a total conflict of interest.”
Fox News did not return requests for comment.

Luntz has denied the allegation, telling Business Insider “You’ve got to understand that I don’t care who wins and loses — I only care that I’m accurate.” Luntz also said that he did meet with Trump, but that it was Trump who approached him first at an event in New Hampshire.

And Luntz specifically defended the objectivity of his focus groups on Monday, pointing to his résumé.

“You’ll have to ask CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, MSNBC, Fox and the BBC — all of them have televised my focus groups. Or President Obama or Vice President Biden — they’ve actually spoken to my focus groups,” he told POLITICO. “Or the dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs who have paid for them. Or POLITICO’s own reporters who have attended them and written about the results for your readers. In each case, they may not always like or agree with what they hear, but they know they need to hear it,” Luntz said.

Luntz did say Trump is dangerous to the Republican Party, because of the possibility he’d run as a third party candidate.

“Trump draws from a lot more Republicans than he does Democrats. And he draws from a group that is not partisan. It leans Republican but it’s not partisan and these are not guaranteed GOP voters if he’s angry and they are angry. So the GOP has to take his candidacy seriously. But even more importantly, they have to take his voters seriously and I don’t think they are doing that as well as they could be,” Luntz said.

When asked if Trump needed to be a more serious candidate, Luntz said to win an election, no, but to be a statesman, yes.

“This is not a game. It’s not a joke. And all these candidates have to take what they say seriously,” Luntz said.

Luntz’s tangles with Trump have helped shape the billionaire real estate developer’s presidential campaign, starting with a run-in at the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa last month.

In an on-stage interview conducted by Luntz at the event, Trump lit into another of his foils, Arizona Sen. John McCain, for whom Trump said he had little affection “because I don’t like losers.”

Luntz interjected “But he’s a war hero!” to which Trump replied “He’s not a war hero … He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured, OK? I hate to tell you. He’s a war hero because he was captured, OK? And I believe — perhaps he’s a war hero. But right now, he’s said some very bad things about a lot of people.”

The comment, which shocked the political and media worlds, drew nearly universal condemnation from Republicans and seemed to threaten Trump’s surprising rise. But it barely dented his poll numbers.

The McCain comments — combined with other intemperate remarks — have soured top conservative donors and officials on Trump, and there was little love for him at the Koch conference where Luntz panned him.

During the “Winning Messages” session, Luntz asked how many donors supported Trump’s campaign, and when no hands were raised, Luntz suggested he was not at all surprised, according to a donor who was present.

In a subsequent session later that day, Luntz conducted an informal applause poll of the donors, which revealed no support among the group for Trump or rival candidates Chris Christie, George Pataki or Lindsey Graham. The Koch network has refused Trump access to its vaunted data services and its events, and he taunted the candidates who made the trip to the donor conference, suggesting they were “puppets.”

But one conference attendee suggested that Luntz’s focus on Trump was not shared by any of the candidates, donors or operatives in attendance.

“Any thought that there was a bunch of restless attention about Trump is not accurate,” the attendee said. “That was just Frank’s opinion. It was only a reflection of him.”