Trump sends cease and desist to CNN over poll he 'felt' was 'fake' showing Biden beating him

President Donald Trump's campaign has sent a cease and desist letter to CNN after a poll commissioned by the news organization, and conducted by SSRS, showed former Vice President Joe Biden beating the incumbent by 14 points among registered voters.

According to CNN, they received a demand to retract the poll and apologize in the form of a cease and desist letter to CNN President Jeff Zucker.

The Trump campaign argued that the poll is "designed to mislead American voters through a biased questionnaire and skewed sampling."

"It's a stunt and a phony poll to cause voter suppression, stifle momentum and enthusiasm for the President, and present a false view generally of the actual support across America for the President."

The campaign requested that CNN retract the pool and publish a "full, fair, and conspicuous retraction, apology, and clarification to correct its misleading conclusions." 

The official cease and desist letter comes after President Trump announced that he had retained McLaughlin & Associates to analyze the poll. McLaughlin & Associates has a C/D rating on FiveThirtyEight.

"I have retained highly respected pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, to analyze todays CNN Poll (and others), which I felt were FAKE based on the incredible enthusiasm we are receiving," the President wrote in a tweet.

He went on to add: "CNN Polls are as Fake as their Reporting. Same numbers, and worse, against Crooked Hillary. The Dems would destroy America!"

In an earlier tweet, President Trump had suggested that he would be up by 25 points if it weren't for being "constantly harassed for three years by fake and illegal investigations, Russia, Russia, Russia, and the Impeachment Hoax."

In 2017, President Donald Trump claimed that "any negative polls are fake news."

In a statement, CNN said it stood by the poll.

David Vigilante, CNN's executive vice president and general counsel, told the campaign that its "allegations and demands are rejected in their entirety."

"To my knowledge, this is the first time in its 40-year history that CNN had been threatened with legal action because an American politician or campaign did not like CNN's polling results," he wrote. "To the extent we have received legal threats from political leaders in the past, they have typically come from countries like Venezuela or other regimes where there is little or no respect for a free and independent media."

CNN also notes that the campaign's letter contains several inaccurate claims.