Michael Cohen Says He Tried To Rig Online Polls 'at the Direction' of Donald Trump (cnbc.com)

Dan Mangan, writing for CNBC: President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer and longtime fixer Michael Cohen on Thursday said he tried to rig online polls -- including one conducted by CNBC -- "at the direction and for the sole benefit of" Trump when he was thinking about making a run for the White House. "I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn't deserve it," Cohen said in a tweet copping to the electronic chicanery to have Trump's name rank higher in online polls than it otherwise would have.

Cohen's admission came shortly after The Wall Street Journal published a story detailing how he retained an information technology company to manipulate a 2014 CNBC online poll identifying the nation's top 100 business leaders to bolster Trump's chances of making that list. That effort failed. And Trump himself fumed in 2014 on Twitter about his absence from CNBC's poll results.

Comments

Growing tension

[Anonymous Coward]

Just goes to show how manipulation of tech can potentially have a huge impact on real lives and influence the view of a society.

Re:Growing tension

[Anonymous Coward]

Another reason tech of any kind needs some sort of regulation.

Re:Growing tension

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, more click bait garbage. We should make paid advertising illegal.

Re:Growing tension

[amicusNYCL]

Another reason tech of any kind needs some sort of regulation

Well that's dumb as hell. What are you suggesting, government oversight of Slashdot polls? Do you suspect Cowboy Neal might be rigging things?

Re:Growing tension

[dryeo]

I think you need more balance in the number of Representatives. It's hard to represent 600,000+ people and as the sibling AC points out, less politicians means easier to influence, as well as making money more important in an election campaign.
If you are going to stick with a system of one representative per 600,000 (and climbing), perhaps other parts of the system need changing so the districts are more balanced. That would take updating the Constitution and it would be easier to just ratify Article the 1st as it would only take 27 more States to ratify. Hey, Article the 2nd did finally pass.

Re:Growing tension

[ath1901]

That's easy: Tribalism. I remember someone saying that the extraordinary thing about the election was that the result was so ordinary. People voted along party lines like they always had.

When a belief becomes a part of your identity, facts no longer matter. Information does change your factual beliefs but not your attitude/position in general. The brain also does motivated reasoning and will find counterarguments for any inconvenient facts. If Trump is caught lying he's not an immoral liar, he's a strategic smart guy playing the opposition etc.

It is important to note this is a universal feature of all humans. We all do top down motivated reasoning. Republicans are not idiots, they just happened to be republicans when an idiot was elected president. It can, and does happen to all of us.

This program explains some of the psychology behind it:

https://youarenotsosmart.com/2...

Re:Growing tension

[AmiMoJo]

Doesn't matter how effective it was. It was illegal campaign spending. TFA says he did it during the campaign and then in early 2017 the Trump org paid him back.

It's the same thing as the Stormy Daniels payment. Not illegal to cheat on your wife, but illegal to spend money covering it up during an election campaign and not declare it.

Re:Growing tension

[GameboyRMH]

Ah, the old "He's not a moron, he's just doing a really good job of pretending to be one for strategic reasons" argument. Well if he's pretending, he's really doing an amazing job:

https://www.apnews.com/a3309c4...

Although I don't see any positive results from doing so. He may have come close to bringing NK to the table but instead he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory:

https://nationalpost.com/opini...

If you think that North Korea has changed course at all since Trump took power, then they've pulled the wool over your eyes just like Trump's:

https://www.theatlantic.com/in...

Also while pulling out of Syria was not a bad idea, the way he chose to announce it, as a surprise to everyone except himself, was idiotic:

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

It's time to MPGA

[TomR teh Pirate]

Let's Make Polling Great Again!

Talk about a guy obsessed with image. I can't ever remember another story quite like this one.

Re:It's time to MPGA

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because it's all bullshit? Cohen turned state's evidence and has been trying to invent stories about Trump in order to win leniency after he got upset that Trump didn't immediately pardon him or something. (Ignoring that you have to be convicted of something to be pardoned of something, and Trump can't control the deep state.) Cohen's a dishonest man and you can't believe a word he says.

Re:It's time to MPGA

[amicusNYCL]

Sound like you were surprised when Trump won.

That was an interesting night. No matter what the outcome I was going to be a little sad for the future of the country, but a little happy that a monumental ego got knocked down. I was prepared, I knew the person that I voted for wasn't going to win, even if it was mathematically possible.

Sounds like you'll be surprised when he wins again.

I try to never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers, I won't be surprised at all if he convinces large numbers of stupid people to again vote against their own self-interest. Trump said it best himself, "I love the poorly educated," and they love him too. It's really an interesting dynamic, he requires large numbers of stupid people to get elected, and they want him to lead them. It's perfect. But it's just a tad bit premature to start taking bets. For example, I think it's highly unlikely that someone who got impeached would get elected again. I know that a felon isn't able to vote, but are felons allowed to run for office? I don't know the answer to that question. Let's wait to hear from Mr. Mueller before we start sucking Trump's dick, OK?

You know nothing of the history of the FBI if you don't think they meddle in politics

I never said I don't think the FBI has ever meddled in politics. I DO think Nixon was guilty. I mean, he fucking resigned. I ALSO realize that Russia wanted Trump to win way, way, way more than they wanted Clinton to win. It's obviously the case. So excuse me if I see you suggesting that Russia was backing Clinton and that Nixon was innocent and think that you're full of shit. The only reason I think that is because it's true.

Hahahhahhaha. Funniest thing I've read all week.

You must live in a sad and lonely world if you think that a substantial portion of government workers and US citizens hate the country. A sad, delusional world. We can disagree with each other without suggesting the other side doesn't love the country. Don't be the poster child for the idiots that the founding fathers were protecting the country from when they decided that treason was going to be the only crime they defined. Their justification for doing so still holds true today. Don't be that person, Americans are better than that. Trump voters might be easily duped into voting against their own interests, but I'm not going to suggest they don't love the country, or at least love what they think America means, even if it's not correct.

I strongly dislike Trump

[93 Escort Wagon]

But I'm not sure, on the face of it, how this substantially differs from the usual political practice of quoting poll numbers which possess only a tenuous relationship with reality.

Re:I strongly dislike Trump

[ichimunki]

1) Understand what polling is and how it works before saying "polls mean nothing". The actual election itself was a poll. The main difference between the election and the pre-election polls was that the election included the entire sample set of people whose votes were actually counted, whereas a pre-election poll, by necessity, cannot know whether any given voter will actually show up on election day, and even if they could predict that perfectly, they have a margin of error regarding whether or not their MUCH smaller sample size is adequately representative of the population of voters on election day.

2) In 2016, the election hinged on a few states where Trump won by very small margins. Margins much smaller than the margin of error in pre-election polls.

3) It is possible that a) late-breaking events or b) the polls themselves altered the behavior of voters when it came time to vote on election day. People can change their minds about who they will vote for or their likelihood of voting. Events that happen after a pre-election poll cannot be retroactively fitted into existing poll results. People deciding that the election is a foregone conclusion and staying home is also difficult to incorporate. People deciding that they simply cannot stand the projected result is the other side of that coin. Constant exposure to polling information is demotivating to the projected winner's supporters and motivating to the supporters of opponents.

4) If the election for president was strictly popular vote, Hillary would have won easily and the polls would have been correct. Instead, polling for who is going to win the office of president is complicated by the fact that you really need to model 50 individual elections and then combine the results. See #2.

5) For the efficacy of polls, you cannot cherry-pick your sample like that and say the 2016 prediction was wrong, therefore polls mean nothing. That is no more insightful than saying that the 2012 predictions were all accurate therefore polls never lie.

6) Different polls have different reliability levels. Online polls of the sort that the President apparently sought to cheat on have some of the worst reliability levels you can get. Online polls have the abysmal selection bias, among other problems. And since his target audience is filled with people who discount science when it comes to things like evolution and climate change, whose education in mathematics, social science, and statistics is almost certainly lacking... it might be useful for him to have polls he cheated on to point to as a counter-point to those produced by the "fake news" folks. Then the narrative becomes "fake news trying to prevent Trump win with fake polls, don't let that happen! The real polls show Trump can win!" Competing polls results can heighten the effects mentioned in #3, to emphasize an "us vs. them" narrative.

But all the polls were biased against Trump...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd be much more interested to know who rigged the polls in favor of Hillary.

Re:Online Polls?

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll see what happens when Mueller's final report comes out.

No you won't. If it does become public (which is not required, hell, it's not even required to be shared with the Congress), at this point it can never live up to the hype.

Expect to be *very* disappointed.

Re:Women for Cohen

[apoc.famine]

That's your favorite part? Come on. How about where Cohen tried to pay for manipulating online polls with a fucking grocery bag full of cash and some boxing gloves from a minor celebrity from his office at Trump tower. AND THAT DIDN'T COVER THE WHOLE BILL SO HE PAID THE REST WITH PERSONAL CHECKS!!!

What the everloving fuck is that shit? This is the dude Trump trusted to be his "fixer" and "lawyer"!?!?! Holy. Shit.

This is the sort of absurdist comedy sketch that wouldn't even make sense at 2am when you were high as shit.

Re:Online Polls?

[slinches]

What law was broken here? It isn't illegal to game online polls. As far as I can tell from the stories so far, the funds were legally reported as a campaign expense. No one seems to be claiming that it was an illegal donation like they were with the hush payments. So where's the issue?

I mean, sure it's "dishonest" to try to influence a poll, but that's about the least dishonest thing political campaigns are doing online as standard practice these days.

Do I think politicians should be better than that? Yes, of course. But news organizations impugning Trump for trying to influence polls that are only there to be gamed or produce a biased view of "public opinion" is hilariously hypocritical.

Trump, and derangement

[LordAba]

Isn't this the case of... most politicians? Or hell, most people who want to be famous? They hire PR firms to up their posts and put them first on search engines. Unless I'm missing something, this is even less than what Hillary did to promote herself.

Re:I'm struggling

[mykepredko]

Nobody but political punditry pay attention to their results and then only when they support their political ideas, otherwise nobody looks at the results or takes them seriously.

That's not quite their purpose. Polls like the ones Mr. Cohen paid to manipulate allows Mr. Trump to stand up in front of his audience and say "I have an 87% approval rate on the highly respected, scientific *whatever* poll. Not only that, the equally comprehensive poll by *clickbait* says that 94% of you are saying I've got the country on the right course!" and it allows Fox News to say that "The biased CNN/NBC/WashingtonPost/NewYorkTimes polls don't match what we're seeing in terms of Mr. Trump's popularity with our own polls."

It's faked references to support a lie.

No one on /. thinks online polls are accurate

[rsilvergun]

but it gives an echo chamber something to report on. This is how the sausage is made:

1. Commission an online poll.
2. Game said poll.
3. Have sites you own pick up the story of you "winning" the poll.
4. Sites you don't own but who are sympathetic with your cause pick up the news stories you wrote based on those faked polls.
5. Eventually if you get enough faked polls and matching stories mass media (Fox, CNN,etc) pick up on them and report them with an itty bitty * to say these numbers aren't scientific.

This works because Americans don't value news and so they don't pay much for it, so there's heavy pressure to keep costs down and overworked journalists and editors will run anything that gets eyeballs. If we paid more for news and had more journalists as a result they'd fact check and find the base polls were bullshit. But a deadline's a deadline and a story's a story as long as it gets those eyeballs on it.

This is how you manipulate the institution of media to do bad things.

Re: Still trying to polish that turd ?

[CronoCloud]

While I wouldn't use the word sociopaths, I think "revenge" for purported slights is fairly accurate. A black man was president, they were now expected to be nice to people they considered their "lessers" (glbt folks, racial/ethnic/religious minorities) and the changes in amercian society and economy were affecting them in various ways. No more factory jobs making TV's, adult children asking for help from parents to pay for things like school supplies, maybe their old white doctor retiring and getting replaced a 2nd generation immigrant or something.

So they threw in with Trump, he promised to return things to the way it was, he said the things they thought in their deepest hearts. And it didn't hurt that he was a famous businessman with gold apartments with a model wife.

They didn't read Newsweek, Time, US News & World report, Mother jones, what have you to know that Trump was a charlatan who'd been "faking it" since the 80's. I first heard of him via a lifestyles of the rich show, where he claimed to be a billionaire...... some time later one of the newsmagazines debunked it said he was deep in debt, had been bailed out by his dad before, and was maybe worth 400 million, tops.

They didn't know that he'd said the Central park 5 who had been exonerated of the crime they'd been jailed for, should stay in jail. He said their settlement for wrongful conviction was a disgrace.
The DNA evidence and their forced confessions mean nothing to him, they're just "thugs" like other black men are to him.

And to a lot of his followers, they have a similar opinion.