'Fatally flawed': Legendary Iowa pollster smacks down Trump’s 'outlandish' lawsuit

21 February

U.S. President Donald Trump looks on at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., February 18, 2025.

Even though he had already won the 2024 election, President Donald Trump sued the Des Moines Register and celebrated political pollster J. Ann Selzer in December over a poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris narrowly winning Iowa, claiming. Now, Selzer is fighting back.

On Friday, New York Times reporter David Enrich tweeted excerpts of Selzer's new 33-page filing in the case, in which she argued Trump's lawsuit should be thrown out on First Amendment grounds. The pollster argued that the president's claim of her poll being "fake news" had no legal or factual basis.

"In the United States there is no such thing as a claim for 'fraudulent news.' No court in any jurisdiction has ever held such a cause of action might be valid, and few plaintiffs have ever attempted to bring such outlandish claims," Selzer's attorneys argued. "Those who have were promptly dismissed."

Selzer went on to say that while the term "fake news" may "play well for some on the campaign trail," it "has no place in America's constitutional jurisprudence." She further argued that even if the term had meaning in the legal realm, Trump's particular complaint is "fatally flawed on every level."

"Plaintiffs fail at the threshold to allege any recoverable damages, and no not state plausible claims, either on the law or on the facts has alleged," the filing read. "No court has ever accepted claims like these, and this Court should not be the first."

The pollster took pride in her work, noting that she has been the Register's de facto pollster for roughly four decades. The filing observed that Selzer has been described as "the best pollster in politics" by political poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight, been given an A+ rating by political analyst Nate Silver and is "regarded as the gold standard nationally and in Iowa." While she acknowledged that her poll showing Harris winning the Hawkeye State was an "outlier," she stood by her work and said that her prior polls had shown Trump in the lead (Trump ultimately won Iowa with 56% of the vote).

In his initial lawsuit, Trump argued that Selzer and the Register violated a consumer fraud law in Iowa that penalizes businesses that make false claims. Puck News' Tara Palmieri called the Trump legal team's interpretation of that law "extremely aggressive." Selzer is asking the court to dismiss Trump's complaint "with prejudice," meaning it can't be re-introduced in the future.

Click here to read Selzer's full filing.

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