Republican presidential hopeful Rand Paul is confident Republicans support his message. Thus, he blames his dismal poll numbers on the media’s coverage of Donald Trump.
“I think it has very little to do with my campaign, or me, or what I’m talking about,” the Kentucky senator said Thursday during a local radio interview with WIBC Indianapolis.
According to a CBS/New York Times poll released Thursday, Paul’s support among likely Republican primary voters has shifted neither up nor down since October. He stands at 4 percent in the Times’ poll and earns 2.2 percent support in RealClearPolitics’ GOP polling average.
“I don’t think it’s bad ideas that is making it more difficult for us in the polls. I think it’s that our ideas are somewhat being trounced upon and overtaken by so much attention being paid to one individual,” he continued.
That individual, Paul says, is Trump — the billionaire-turned-Republican front-runner whose unorthodox path to the White House continues to consume media’s coverage of the 2016 election.
“One of the reasons I say that is there was a chyron on the TV this morning and it said in the last three days, Trump has had 105 hours of discussion about him [and] the president had three hours…,” Paul noted.
In comparison, Paul says the amount of time pundits spend discussing him would likely add up to “several minutes.”
“So is it any kind of surprise that [Trump] leads in the polls?” he said.
The libertarian senator is ninth in the newest Washington Examiner presidential power rankings released earlier this week.
