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Donald Trump slammed media polling practices as not “legit” before going on to describe his 44 percent approval rating as “actually not bad.”
The president used a rally in Michigan to celebrate his first 100 days in office to revisit some of his greatest campaign trail hits including immigration, Joe Biden, complaints of the “crooked” media and negative stories about him.
“You know, they do these polls where they interview far more Democrats than Republicans over the last few days, and I had them checked out,” he said. “They interview far more Democrats for the polls. They interview Democrats by big numbers and then Republicans by small they say Trump only has a 44 percent approval rating.
“Well, it’s actually not bad, but when you figure that if it were a legit poll, it would be in the 60s or 70s as these people are a bunch of crooked people.”
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It comes after a three-day poll, completed on Sunday, showed 42 percent of respondents approved of the Republican leader’s performance in office. The share of people who disapprove of his presidency was also steady at 53 percent.
The poll, conducted by Reuters/Ipsos, surveyed 1,029 U.S. adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about 3 percentage points.
Back in Michigan, Trump suggested his approval ratings on “legitimate polls” were as high as 70 percent, before claiming that media polls were biased and were the basis of negative stories about him.
“Now they interview more Democrats than Republicans. In other words, they take the poll and they interview Democrats, they poll Democrats, and then they say they try to depress it… but just like they write bad stories, 97 percent of the stories written about me think of it were negative, and yet we won in a landslide because they have no credibility.”
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The president moved on to more of his favorite subjects from previous rallies, including border security, illegal immigrants and the price of eggs as well as taking shots at his predecessor Biden.
At one point, staying with the theme of polls, he conducted a “live poll” about how he should refer to the former president – “Sleepy Joe” or “Crooked Joe.”
However, despite Trump’s claims about a booming economy, the Reuters poll showed that the percentage of respondents who approve of his economic stewardship had declined a point to 36 percent – the lowest level in his current term or in his 2017-2021 presidency, while disapproval rose 5 points to 56 percent.
