This is not a joke and it is not satire. Donald Trump has now gone so batshit loopy that his campaign is now issuing a legal "cease and desist" demand to CNN for ... conducting a poll that shows Donald Trump is losing.
That's it, that's the complaint. The poll shows Donald His Majesty Batshit Von Weirdstance Trump behind challenger Joe Biden, with Biden winning 55%-41%, and the idiot was so infuriated by the poll, which he tweeted was "FAKE," that his campaign had to placate him by threatening CNN with dire legal consequences for bein' mean to him.
The letter, which again is apparently absolutely real and demands a "conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification," claims that the poll was "a stunt" and "phony," to "cause voter suppression, stifle momentum and enthusiasm for" the White WalkerToChurch leader, reports CNN. And it uses numerous weird claims from perennially sketchy Republican pollster McLaughlin & Ass. to assert that well, CNN's pollster did it all wrong and Actually Dear Leader would be leading if they did it right, so everybody needs to shut up and apologize and I still cannot believe this is a real letter, are we serious about this insanity? Wait, I'm being told it really is.
The problem here, and there are many, is that the CNN poll is only one of many to show the same results: Trump's absolute botching of the pandemic and, now, blustering garbagemouthedness during nationwide protests are absolutely tanking his approval ratings, even causing states like Ohio to come back into campaign play.
The Trump campaign's assertion that well Actually Trump is winning includes claims that CNN had the audacity to conduct the poll before the latest "great economic news," which renders it invalid, and it was "biased," and also apparently the moon was in the wrong phase and CNN failed to account for the votes of invading Lobster People or whatever. It doesn't matter.
Similarly, the pseudo-legal campaign complaint that CNN produced the poll to "cause voter suppression" is not a particularly plausible assertion, given the Republican Party's robust support for suppressing voters as much as possible, using whatever means are necessary.
It's quite obvious that the only purposes of the letter are (1) to try to stifle Trump's narcissistic rage, as he turns "malignantly crazy" over bad polling and contemplates firing golden boy Jared Kushner, and (2) to serve as a campaign press release. It is important to Trump that his base believes he is not losing, and the only way those around him can regain even a modicum of control over the decompensating idiot is to flatter those delusions and adopt them as their own. It is also important for the campaign to propagandize their base further into the delusion that all bad news for the fascist manchild is assuredly "fake," the products of a malevolent media that has been conspiring against him rather than Trump repeatedly putting his own foot into his colon, then demanding to know how it got there.
So expect this to be a fundraising theme, for a while. And expect the campaign to target other polls and other outlets as being engaged in similar conspiracies to make Donald look bad.
And expect Donald to get even more unstable, and slip deeper into authoritarian demands and bizarre public claims, as his malignant narcissism rewrites all he sees and hears rather than admit he is not, in fact, the greatest human who has ever lived, spoken, or purchased real estate.