Flawed poll on Trump cited in Clinton presidential papers
The documents reveal little about the personal interactions between Trump and the Clintons, but they include a few nuggets that add to the ever-growing documentation of another very public relationship— that of opinion polls and the billionaire GOP front runner.
The talking points, drafted in an email between two Clinton aides in March 1993, drew from news reports detailing several problems identified by the National Council on Public Polls with a survey published by former third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot in TV Guide and other publications.
According to USA Today articles from the time, the newspaper had asked readers to call a 1-900 number, pay 50 cents and say whether they agreed with two statements: either "Donald Trump symbolizes what makes the USA a great country" or "Donald Trump symbolizes the things that are wrong with this country."
In addition to the White House memo on the poll, the records released on the library's website included briefing memos from 1999 in which Clinton aides prepared the president to address a question about the presidential aspirations of Trump, Warren Beatty and Cybil Shepherd and whether Clinton had contributed to a trivialization of the office.