U.S. President Donald Trump is feeling the heat. One can tell because he’s — yet again — spouting nonsense on Twitter, as if he’s been backed into a metaphorical corner.
Sunday, he took to the social media platform to tout what a great job he’s supposedly doing as president. As evidence for this claim, he pointed to poll numbers — which may or may not actually exist. Considering precedent, actual broadly relevant poll numbers probably don’t.
He wrote:
‘Presidential Approval numbers are very good – strong economy, military and just about everything else. Better numbers than Obama at this point, by far. We are winning on just about every front and for that reason there will not be a Blue Wave, but there might be a Red Wave!’
Note how he didn’t even try to point to any particular polling.
According to Gallup, at the point of his tenure corresponding to the one Trump’s currently at, Barack Obama had an approval rating of 45%. According to the same polling organization, Trump’s current approval rating is 40% — which happens to be the lowest approval rating that Gallup recorded for Obama during his entire time in office.
Obama left the White House boasting an approval rating of 59% — which the current president hasn’t even reached yet in Gallup’s polls. Trump’s current low in Gallup’s polling is 35% — and for the record, not a single other president Gallup has ever covered with their polling had only 40% of the public’s approval in August of their second year in office.
Trump does finish slightly ahead of Obama according to Rasmussen polling. The organization tracks presidential approval on a daily basis. On August 3, 2018 — the second August of his administration — it had Trump with a 48 percent approval rating. Obama, on August 3, 2010, had a 46 percent approval rating.
To suggest either that the president had this particular poll in mind when writing his tweet or that the slight edge over Obama that Trump currently has in Rasmussen’s documented right wing leaning polling would be misguided.
For one, within days of the August 3 Rasmussen reading, Trump was below Obama’s approval rating measured at the same point in the most recent president’s term, so it’s not as though there’s some big dramatic lead to tout.
Also, Trump has a history of making up polls. Lately, it’s become a repeated Trump talking point that he has supposedly been measured as more popular than Abraham Lincoln. He hasn’t — presidential approval rating didn’t even exist when Abraham Lincoln was in office.
Trump still continues on with his lies, though.
Besides the seemingly made up poll numbers, it’s not as though his claims about the supposed benefits of his presidency particularly match up to reality.
Does he call steep retaliatory tariffs that force his administration to develop a $12 billion bailout package for American farm interests “winning”? The Trump administration-induced trade wars and their after effects have been cited in the past, but reality hasn’t changed, and they’re still relevant to the struggling American agricultural and industrial interests.
In Trump’s world, everything is getting along just fine, however.
Check out Twitter’s response to his latest instance of aloof behavior below.
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
