Trump’s got a very Trumpian plan to fight off bad poll numbers

Despite the concerted efforts of President Donald Trump and his allies in the executive branch, the federal government still maintains some credibility in the eyes of the public. And while things are going badly in his second term—the economy is faltering, prices continue to rise, and his crackdown on immigration is unpopular—Trump is looking for anything he can use to his advantage. The president, whose approval numbers are falling apart all over the place, is trying to exploit the public’s general trust in government numbers.

In recent weeks, the President has repeatedly suggested that the problem is not him, but reality as measured by objective observers. Like pollsters.

“When the real numbers start coming out and the real pollsters start polling,” he said. He said at an event at the White House “I think you’re going to see some really great numbers,” he said in December.

Trump has repeatedly suggested that the problem is not with him, but with reality as measured by objective observers. Like pollsters.

In summary, this is an interesting thing to say, but not so strange coming from Trump. He has long insisted that polls showing him unpopular or struggling are fake and biased. Unsurprisingly for someone with as few principles as he is, he has also long touted positive polls from the most respected pollsters in the country.

But this raises the question: Who are these “real pollsters” that Trump is referring to, for which we have incomplete data?

We found a clue. One of the research firms that the president’s team trusts is the president’s team.

On the social media platform it owns, Trump shared a photo He notes that a staggering 91% of people have noticed that gas prices have dropped since he returned to the White House. The source of this impressive number? A “White House email survey.”

Although this is not obvious to everyone, this poll is not a reliable measure of public opinion. There is no indication that anyone other than Trump supporters received this email; The question itself seems to assume that a noticeable decline has occurred, and even if the finding is reliable, this is only a fraction of spending and the economy.

Why does it matter that the respondents to this supposed poll are likely Trump supporters? Well, consider how Americans reacted to the tax cut package Trump signed in late 2017. As of March 2018, most Americans reported seeing no benefits in their paychecks. But among Republicans nearly two-thirds reported noticing benefits.

Perhaps this “email poll” was a one-off, and Trump expected sympathetic pollsters to ask questions that would make his policies appear more popular than they currently do. But we shouldn’t assume that the White House is beyond creating its own reality on a controversial issue; After all, it already exists.

After Trump lost the popular vote in the 2016 and 2020 elections, he turned to unfounded conspiracy theories about what happened. In 2016, he insisted that allegations of Russian interference were both dishonest and intended to harm him. He claimed that widespread (yet somehow undetected) fraud in 2020 distorted the results.

During his first term, Trump sought to undermine the idea of ​​Russian interference and, more energetically, to show that allegations of Russian efforts to distort the 2016 results were actually a fiction created by his enemies. Attorney General William Barr appointed an investigator named John Durham, who worked diligently to show that the original Russia investigation was the product of bias and stemmed from people like Hillary Clinton. it didn’t workThis was partly because Barr and Durham were still constrained by reality.

In his second term, Trump made sure that no one to whom he delegated authority saw himself similarly limited. We saw the release of Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard Selective and misleading information About the origins of the investigation and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s effort to argue that: criminal charges are warranted. Nothing significant has changed except the administration’s willingness to use its power to satisfy Trump’s whims.

Just as Trump has made the Republican Party an appendage of his whims, he would certainly do the same with the US government.

We can expect the same approach in the next 2020 elections. Trump at White House event where he promised “real numbers” from “real pollsters” Promised “truckload” of information The alleged fraud was about to be made public. It is unclear where this evidence, some of which overlaps with Trump’s final months in the White House, has been stored for the past five years. There was certainly no shortage of people looking for him. But Trump assures us all will be revealed now that he is back in office.

Maybe this is Trump promising once again to prove the election was stolen. Or maybe Trump is aware that his team is poised to reveal another cache containing “Official Documents” “Suppressed by Liberals and the Deep State” as part of a long-running plan to “Harm Donald Trump.” The essential beauty of conspiracy theories is that their adherents uncritically accept supporting evidence, no matter how dubious or clearly fraudulent.

But here—as with the 91 percent poll or the findings of the Russia investigation—skepticism and dishonesty are obscured by the fact that they come from federal agencies. Surely the head of the national intelligence community wouldn’t just make up allegations and make them public, right? Surely the president’s office wouldn’t try to create good news that doesn’t exist, right?

Absolutely not, except that the president who appoints the necessary intelligence officials is Donald Trump, who will do them in spades. And just as Trump has made the Republican Party an appendage of his whims, he would certainly do the same with the US government.

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