Donald Trump repeatedly quoted an exclusive DailyMail.com poll in his first press conference since his guilty verdict.
The poll showed him receiving a six-point boost among voters in the hours after being convicted in his historic hush money trial.
Trump said: ‘This is bigger than Trump, and bigger than me, and bigger than my presidency.
‘And the people understand it because I just see a poll came out – The Daily Mail. The first one came out, done last night right after the verdict, where I’m up six points.
‘Six points from what we already were. We were leading fairly substantially. We’re up six points in the Daily Mail poll.’
He added: ‘Maybe other polls come out and say something differently. But a lot of people have predicted it. The public understands what is going on. This is a scam. This is a rigged trial.’
Later, Trump added: ‘The other thing, a poll came out. The first poll. Maybe others will be bad. But the poll just came out a little while ago, The Daily Mail.
‘Does anybody read The Daily Mail? They have a good poll. I like it today. The Daily Mail just came out with a poll and it has Trump up six points in the last 12 hours. Six points since this happened.’
Trump was returning to the campaign trail with a news conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan.
He was speaking a day after becoming the first former U.S. President to be convicted in a criminal trial.
In his news conference he slammed judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the case.
He said: ‘You saw what happened to some of the witnesses that were on our side.
‘They were literally crucified by this man who looks like an angel but he is really a devil.
‘He looks so nice and soft. People say he seems like such a nice man. Unless you saw him in action.’
Trump was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records on Thursday.
A jury found he did so in an attempt to illegally influence the 2016 election by hiding a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
She claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade before that, which he denied.
The 34 counts each carry a possible maximum sentence of four years in prison.
Trump will be sentenced by Judge Juan Merchan on July 11, just four days before the Republican National Convention.
He could face penalties ranging from prison to a fine or probation.
At his news conference Trump added; ‘If they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone. They are bad people, in many cases I believe sick people.
‘We have a president and a group of fascists that don’t want to do anything about it. They want to raise your taxes by four times. They want to stop you having cars.
He also slammed the ‘nasty gag order’ the judge had imposed on him, and said it came from Joe Biden..
He said: ‘I’m the leading person for president and I am under a gag order by a man that can’t put two sentences together. This is all done by Biden and his people. This is done by Washington.’
The former president claims the case against him was orchestrated by his Democrat successor to try to keep him out of the White House.
Trump spokesman Jason Miller said: ‘There is nobody who is more defiant. He’s ready to get out there and start fighting again.’
On Friday morning, Trump’s campaign announced it had raised $34.8 million as donations poured in after the verdict.
That amounted to more than $1 million for each felony charge he was convicted of.
It was also more than his political operation raised in January and February combined.
Trump campaign spokesman Brian Hughes cited the outpouring as a sign “that Americans have seen this sham trial as the political election interference that Biden and Democrats have always intended.”
“November 5th is the day Americans will deliver the real verdict!”
Trump and his campaign had been preparing for a guilty verdict for days, although they held out hope for a hung jury.
On Tuesday, Trump said that not even Mother Teresa could beat the ‘rigged’ case.