Trump takes a moment to brag that less than half the country thinks he's doing a good job

By Philip Bump May 25 at 4:50 PM

This is a very weird tweet.

Link to tweet

By itself, it’s weird. The president is thanking America for its support … while pointing out that less than half of the country thinks he’s doing a good job? Sure, 48 percent is more support than he earned in the November election, when he pulled about 46 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 48. But generally speaking, a 48 percent approval rating for a president is not what you might call “high.”

Setting that aside, though, it’s even weirder because that 48 percent isn’t even a good number by Trump standards! It’s from a poll from Rasmussen Reports, as the image indicates. Over the course of Trump’s presidency, Rasmussen has almost always showed stronger support for Trump than other polls, as data from HuffPost Pollster makes obvious.



So what Trump is doing is the equivalent of entering an Olympic diving competition and only reporting the high scores from the judges. It’s not a good representation of how he did overall. In Pollster’s running average, Trump is actually at 39.8 percent approval, worse than the 48 percent he touts. In RealClearPolitics’ average, he does slightly better: 39.9 percent.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/05/25/trump-take-a-moment-to-brag-that-less-than-half-the-country-thinks-hes-doing-a-good-job/