Pollster Frank Luntz After Watching SOTU: 'Tonight, I Owe Donald Trump an Apology'
A former President Trump hater admitted that he owed the president an apology after the State of the Union address Tuesday night.
Frank Luntz, a pollster who has had many feuds with Trump in the past, tweeted his appreciation for his former adversary and said, “Tonight, I owe Donald Trump an apology.”
Luntz’s Twitter feed was filled with praises for Trump’s speech.
In a different Tweet, the pollster acknowledged his past criticism of the president but added “tonight is Donald Trump at his very best. He’s personalized his language and policies better than I’ve ever seen.”
In August 2015, Luntz conducted a focus group and trashed Trump, The Washington Times reported. In response, the then-businessman took to the media to accuse the pollster of taking revenge.
“I watch this guy do a really negative report on me, and the only reason he did it, in my opinion, is because I didn’t want to hire him commercially,” Trump said to Business Insider. “I think it’s disgusting… I think he uses his power at Fox to maybe — to get work.”
Lutz denied the accusations and said, “This guy has got considerable support, and he’s going to have considerable support all the way through. He’s also got considerable enemies, and he doesn’t like it when anyone says that he’s not great.”
Politico also did a report in 2015 on the feud “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.”
Now, it seems that Luntz has changed his tune.
“This speech is going to have a measurable impact on Trump’s favorability and popularity,” he wrote.
Lutz acknowledged that many of his 246,000 followers probably will not agree with his sudden change of heart. He told them to “Tune into @Morning_Joe now, then come back to yell at me on Twitter…”
On “Morning Joe,” the pollster debated with Joe Scarborough over the speech.
“Why is it that everything he says drives the left nuts?” Luntz asked. “Just because Republicans criticized Barack Obama — we all agree that it went too much, it was hyper-partisanship — we have that right now from the Donald Trump speech and that’s wrong.”
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