Donald Trump's campaign is blaming media czar Rupert Murdoch for a new poll that finds the billionaire developer now trails Ted Cruz in the race for the GOP presidential nomination.
The poll — commissioned by The Wall Street Journal, which Murdoch owns, and NBC News — claims
Cruz leads Trump nationally 28 to 26 percent, a finding Trump's senior adviser and social media director Dan Scavino finds dubious.
On Twitter, Scavino released a list of 10 recent national polls, all of which show Trump with a substantial lead over Cruz — except for the one released by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News, according to
Media Matters.
Trump is also disputing the poll, which on Thursday morning he labelled "a total joke," noting that a new CBS News national poll has him leading Cruz 35-17 percent.
Trump said on Twitter:
According to
The Hill, at his MSNBC town hall meeting on Wednesday evening, Trump said of The Journal:
"I think somebody at the Wall Street Journal doesn't like me … [I've] never done well with the Wall Street Journal poll."
The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll broke a streak of 31 consecutive national polls which had Trump as the GOP presidential fron-trunner.
Trump and Murdoch have been at loggerheads for months after the candidate accused Megyn Kelly, an anchor at the Murdoch-owned Fox News Channel, of being unfair to him in the first GOP presidential debate.
Trump boycotted a later Fox-sponsored debate after the network made fun of him in a press release.