Donald Trump’s latest tweet seems so similar to many of his other lie-filled social media posts about his poll numbers.
95% Approval Rating in the Republican Party, a record. 53% Approval Rating overall (can we add 7 to 10 percent because of the Trump “thing?”). Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2020
Yet, this time, in addition to inflating his popularity within his own party to record levels that simply aren’t true — the real number according to the most recent YouGov/Economist poll is closer to 88 percent and his overall popularity hasn’t exceeded even 45 percent since the first week of his presidency in FiveThirtyEight.com’s aggregation of all polls — Trump is providing an excuse for his obvious exaggeration of his poll numbers in a rare winking admission of his own dishonesty about his job performance assessments.
Firstly, to answer the president’s question, no, he cannot add 7 to 10 percent because of the Trump “thing.”
Secondly, whatever Trump may think his “thing” is — charisma, privilege, power, money, connections, a mastery of the art of the con — a larger proportion of the American and international public see his “thing” differently than he does.
What the recent polls do show is that a majority of the public now believes that Trump should be removed from office, seeing his “thing” as unconstitutional actions, deception, obstruction, cruelty, hypocrisy, idiocy, incompetence, insanity, war crimes, and a list of other deplorable traits to numerous to detail in their entirety.
For this majority, knowing that this president is a compulsive fabulist, they can generally take any figure that Trump pulls out of his ample rear end and cut it in half to get a number that may perhaps be somewhat closer to reality than anything that he purports.
The Trump “thing” merits subtraction, not addition.
You’re welcome!
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