Trump decries 'Fake Poll' showing his approval rate in the 30s

President Trump lashed out Tuesday at what he called a “Fake Poll” that shows his job approval numbers dropping by 6 points over the last two months as fears of an economic recession have risen.

The ABC News/Washington Post poll that angered the president found that 60 percent of Americans surveyed now believe a recession is likely in the next year. That same percentage of Americans is also concerned that Trump’s trade war with China will raise prices on consumer goods in the U.S.

That economic anxiety has helped push Trump’s job approval numbers down from 44 percent in July to just 38 percent in September, the poll found.

The president wasted little time disputing the poll’s results.

But two other polls released Tuesday confirmed the downward trend. Both Gallup and CNN found Trump’s approval rating to be at 39 percent.

Since his inauguration, Trump has routinely dismissed polls and news stories that have not portrayed him in a favorable light, assuring the public that the truth stands in opposition to what he calls the “Fake News Media.”

The president has also assured his supporters that internal polls not available to the public show him with a comfortable lead on Democrats seeking to replace him.

But after a Trump staffer leaked the results of an internal poll taken in May that reportedly showed the president trailing former Vice President Joe Biden in key battleground states, the president alleged a conspiracy.

“We have great internal polling, there were fake polls released by somebody that is — it is ridiculous. We are winning in every single state that we polled. We’re winning in Texas very big, in Ohio very big, in Florida very big,” Trump said on June 12, adding, “They were fake polls that were either put out by the corrupt media, much of the media in this country is corrupt.”

With doubts continuing to fester about his reelection chances, the president reiterated his assurances days later.

When Fox News released a poll in August showing Trump losing head-to-head match-ups with four top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, the president again blamed the messenger.

“There’s something going on at Fox, I’ll tell you right now,” Trump told reporters last month. “And I’m not happy with it.”

That same poll showed his approval rating dipping to 43 percent and his disapproval numbers hitting 56 percent.

While Trump often portrays the polling taken in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election as wildly inaccurate, he often ignores the fact that Democrat Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of 2.1 percent. While most of the final polls taken ahead of Election Day showed Clinton ahead of Trump by a margin of 3 to 6 percentage points, only Monmouth University’s 6 point lead fell outside of the margin of error.

Meanwhile, the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, admitted in January to attempts to rig online polls in Trump’s favor ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

“I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it,” tweeted Cohen, who is currently serving a three-year prison sentence for violating campaign finance laws, bank and tax fraud, and lying to Congress about efforts by the Trump organization to build a skyscraper in Moscow.

Cohen added that his efforts to skew the polls came at the direction of the man who now sits in the Oval Office.

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