Donald Trump is reduced to begging
It’s difficult to figure out what, if anything, is going on inside Donald Trump’s head at this point. Things are at their absolute lowest when it comes to the failure of his illegitimate presidency, his worsening scandals, and the increasing inevitability that this is all going to end very, very badly for him. Yet he seems to be more eager than ever to believe that everything is just fine and dandy, and he’s now begging you to believe the same.
Take, for instance, this tweet posted by Trump: “Rasmussen and others have my approval ratings at around 50%, which is higher than Obama, and yet the political pundits love saying my approval ratings are “somewhat low.” They know they are lying when they say it. Turn off the show – FAKE NEWS!” For starters, Rasmussen is a notoriously fake poll that’s regularly skewed to make Republicans look good, and even it only has Trump at 45%. There are no other polls that come even close to 45%. So he’s greatly exaggerating about the one fake poll that makes him look good, and he’s just making up the rest.
This, of course, is nothing new. Trump has long boasted of the Rasmussen poll as if it were the only poll, or in this case, invented other strong poll numbers in his head that simply don’t exist. He’s also repeated several variations of the false claim that he’s more popular than President Obama. What’s new here is the part where he’s begging you, in all caps, with an exclamation point thrown in for desperation, not to listen to anyone who points out that he’s doing significantly worse in the poll than he’s claiming.
If Donald Trump thought anyone outside his base was likely to believe his false claims about the polls, or even if he was truly able to believe his own lie, he wouldn’t be so desperate for you to tune out anyone who’s quoting the facts. We debate all day about how accurate the polls are in general, but one thing is for sure: Trump is lying about the polls – and he’s begging you to ignore the truth about the polls.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report