From The Nation
The president's pattern of lying to himself--and to fellow Republicans--sustains bad policy and failed governance.
Donald Trump is so out of touch with reality that he thinks he is popular.
He's not. And Americans, no matter what their partisanship, no matter what their ideology, should be worried that their president is lying not just to them but to himself.
Trump has been obsessed in recent days by a Rasmussen Reports daily presidential tracking poll that was published April 4. It put his approval rating at 51 percent. "Still Rising: Rasmussen Poll Shows Donald Trump Approval Ratings Now at 51 Percent," Trump tweeted on Wednesday, as part of a pattern of tweets claiming that he's experiencing a popularity surge.
Appearing Friday morning on the Trump-approving Bernie & Sid Show on New York's WABC radio show -- "we both think you're doing a terrific job..." -- the president claimed he was on a roll. "A poll just came out now, Rasmussen, it's now 51," chirped the president. "And they say that it's 51, but add another 7 or 8 points to it. That's somewhat embarrassing for me to tell you because they don't want to talk about it, but when they get into the [voting] booth they're going to vote for Trump."
The problem with Trump's calculus is that, the "51" number was always an outlier. And it was already collapsing.
Rasmussen, a polling firm that has consistently found higher numbers for Trump than other survey research operations, did put the president at 51 on Wednesday. But Thursday's Rasmussen daily tracking poll had the president's approval rating falling to 47 percent, with 51 percent of those polled expressing disapproval. On Friday, when Trump was saying "it's now 51," his Rasmussen approval rating was actually 47 percent, while his disapproval number had risen to 52 percent.
In other words, the survey firm that the president has been busy thanking for doing "honest polling" is telling us that his approval rating has gone down in a week that saw talk of a "trade war" with China and mounting calls for the removal of scandal-plagued Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt.
